On the heels of North Dakota State shaking up mid-major athletics, the University of North Dakota followed suit, sending waves through the Big Sky Conference on Wednesday.
Six days after NDSU announced it will offer full cost of attendance to all of its scholarship athletes beginning in the 2016-17 academic year, UND announced it will pay all full scholarship athletes amended grant-in aid — essentially bonus stipends — for every scholarship athlete at the school. UND is the first of 12 Big Sky Conference members to pledge full cost of attendance aid.
UND joined the Big Sky as a full-fledged member in 2012. While the results in competition have been mixed, the school’s ability to pour money into the campus as a whole and the athletic department specifically is turning heads.
Wednesday’s announcement got the attention of Montana State athletic director Peter Fields, Montana athletic director Kent Haslam and Eastern Washington AD Bill Chaves. Each of the three are the heads of the three most powerful, successful and influential athletic departments in the Big Sky outside of Northern Arizona.
“We are ware of the changing landscape and conversations are taking place,” Fields said in a text message, but added that no changes are imminent.
“College athletics is always changing and we certainly want to do all we can to support student-athletes,” Haslam wrote in an email to Skyline Sports. “But, it has to be done in a fiscally responsible and sustainable way. We will continue to work hard to make sure we are competitive and providing great academic opportunities.”
“We are still monitoring the landscape and haven’t made any decisions yet,” Chaves said in a text message communicated by EWU sports information director Dave Cook.
Before Wednesday’s announcement, UND already offers full cost of attendance for athletes with men’s and women’s hockey scholarships.
“This is a necessary step that empowers our coaches to continue recruiting high-caliber student-athletes. It puts our coaches on equal financial footing when competing against regional peer institutions for the best recruits,” UND athletic director Brian Faison said in the press release.
UND estimates the cost for full scholarship athletes is $3,400 annually, the same as NDSU will pay. The figure was independently set by each school’s financial aid office according to the Fargo Forum’s Jeff Kolpack. For the nearly 200 athletes at each school, the bill is estimated to total between $600,000 and $700,000 annually.
In April, Liberty University became the first FCS school to pledge to offer full cost of attendance.
Offering FCOA is the latest upgrade UND has made in its athletic department. Last August, UND approved more than $180 million in public and privately funded building projects that includes a new School of Medicine & Health Sciences (SMHS) headquarters, a major expansion of the UND School of Law, and the first phase the High Performance Center, the second indoor practice facility in the league. The facility opened earlier this fall and UND practiced in it for the first time on Aug. 22. The installation of the track is still in progress.
Weber State opened the $9.2 million Marquardt Field House in the fall of 2013.
Faison called the High Performance Center a “game changer” in a UND press release. The facility will enable UND to host track and field events during the indoor season for the first time. The estimated cost of the first phase of the project is $17.8 million. The funding comes from a mix of private donations, corporate gifts and sponsorships.
A second phase of the project is in the works. Additions of athletic training facilities, meeting rooms, coaches offices, locker rooms, and academic support center and the primary strength and conditioning areas for the athletics department will cost an additional $15 to $16 million.
