Ivy League to audit athletes' financial aid

Will investigateWill investigatewhether athletes getWill investigatewhether athletes getinflated packages The Ivy League will soon conduct an internal audit to determine if any of its members are violating the league's long-standing policy prohibiting athletic scholarships. The audit, which was initiated by the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, will investigate whether athletes receive more financial aid than non-athletes. It is Ivy League policy that financial aid should be need-based and athletes should not receive any additional financial benefits as an incentive to enroll in the school. This is the first audit the Ivy League has conducted since the league reached a settlement on a federal price-fixing suit in 1991. Jeffrey Orleans, executive director of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, downplayed the significance of the audit. In a statement released on April 5, Orleans said the audit "is the regular administrative procedure provided for in the League's consent judgement for verifying that compliance." He added that the Ivy League Presidents "are quite confident" that the audit will not find any wrongdoing among the member schools. While Penn has been publicly accused of stretching the rules for the benefit of its athletic team members, University officials expressed confidence that the audit will find Penn in full compliance with Ivy League procedure. "The study will show that Penn awards its financial aid fairly, and that athletes at Penn do not have an unfair economic advantage over other students," University spokesperson Barbara Beck said yesterday. Stanley Jarocki, Penn's associate athletic director, said in The New York Times on Friday that the Athletic Department is involved with the financial aid process for its athletes. "What we try to do in terms of looking at that information is walk families through the process and give them a sense of the estimated financial aid -- and whether it is doable," Jarocki said. He added that if the family is not happy with the financial aid package, "we go back to the financial aid office and see if assessments can be made more accurate." The audit will investigate whether the process that Jarocki described -- commonly referred to as pre-reads -- leads to larger aid packages for athletes. Donald Routh, Yale University's director of financial aid, has noticed that athletes sometimes receive more aid than necessary. "The most common kind of case we deal with, where we feel the other school has been too generous with aid, involves athletes," Routh told the Times. "Obviously, all schools are in competition for good athletes, and all Ivy League schools would argue they offer only need-based aid. But I guess it's a question of how far you stretch it." Orleans responded in his statement that the quotes in the Times article were "simply speculation." "Ivy aid procedures are fully open to, and used by, all interested applicants, and Ivy financial aid offices make substantial efforts to respond to every family which applies for aid, from any circumstance," he said. Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky could not be reached for comment. The Associated Press contributed to this story.