In February, athletic director Steve Bilsky became the first prominent Ivy League official to speak out against financial-aid competition among the conference schools, which he believes could give some a serious leg up on recruiting and relegate others - the poorer ones, to be blunt - to a second tier.
At the time, Bilsky hoped that a discussion of the problem would eventually lead to a league-wide plan to help remove financial considerations from the athletic recruiting process. He and other Ivy League officials then worked to put their concerns before the conference presidents, who discussed the issue at their annual summit over the summer.
Bilsky has now conceded that the comprehensive solution he once hoped for is out of reach for the time being, and that each school will probably have to address concerns about financial-aid inequity on its own.
"I would say that, for a variety of reasons, nothing is going to happen league-wide where we are right now," Bilsky said. He added that the retirement this year of long-standing Ivy League executive director Jeff Orleans would make it difficult to seriously explore the issue, since as soon as the research could begin to yield results, Orleans would be out the door.
In the meantime, Bilsky thinks that the best thing the schools can do is increase the transparency of their financial-aid policies to ensure that they each know what to do to stay competitive.
"Nobody really knows what everybody else is doing" outside of vague press releases, he said.
Several Ivy League Athletic Departments declined to comment for this article.
Penn's policy, while not as aggressive as the financial-aid initiatives at Harvard or Yale, is among the more generous in the Ivy League. All undergraduate student aid packages at Penn will be free of loans by Sept. 2009, a commitment that some other schools have not made. By 2009, Cornell will only eliminate loans for students of households making up to $75,000 and cap loans for those making less than $120,000. Coaches at Cornell have complained publicly about that fact.
"To say that Penn is behind the eight-ball on this would be tremendously unfair," Bilsky said.
Nonetheless, he said that he and the Ivy schools that are not as well-positioned were still concerned about the potential impact that money could have on attracting athletes. At the Council of Ivy Presidents meeting, each school agreed to submit certain data to the conference offices in Princeton, N.J., to see if indicators such as won-loss records or admissions statistics move in response to the new policies.
"It's too soon to really know" the effects on athletic recruiting, said Penn President Amy Gutmann, who currently chairs the Ivy Council. "As far as the whole Ivy League, it's going to take some years until we really have the data, and we'll get the data as soon as it's available.
"I'd say it won't be for a year until we really know how it's changing overall the Ivy landscape," she said.
