N.S. universities spend heavily on athletics scholarships

Acadia, Saint Mary’s, Dalhousie and St. FX among top 10.

The SMU Huskies hockey team at a practise. SMU is one of the top ten universities in Canada for spending on athletic scholarships. Photo: Allison McCabe

Students at Acadia, Saint Mary's, Dalhousie and St. Francis Xavier, rank among the most lavished university athletes in the country, according to Canadian Interuniversity Sport statistics.

This week the CIS released figures on the amount of money universities across Canada spend on sports scholarships. Four Atlantic University Sport (AUS) schools are listed in the top 10 highest-spending athletic departments in Canada.

Acadia, the second-highest in the country, gave out $463,664 in sports awards to 216 student athletes in 2008-09, more than twice as much as it allotted to 181 students five years ago. The awards average $2,146 per student.

Brian Heaney, athletics director at Acadia, attributes the university's second-place spot to two factors.

"A lot of it is we do have 10 sports...that sort of bulks that number up and it does vary from year to year," he says. "It also depends on the success of the respective programs, such as alumni fundraising or events that generate fundraising dollars."

Cape Breton University did not make the top 10 but gives more athletic financial awards per capita than any of the top-spending schools with an average of $2,597 going to its undergraduate athletes, according to the study.

John Ryan, CBU's athletic director says the scholarships his department gives out are divided over fewer individuals, which allows more to be given to each student. He says the AUS as a whole places a strong emphasis on athletic funding.

"The AUS is very, very competitive in terms of where our teams stack up against others across the country," said Ryan. "We're in the business to try and keep the best student athletes here in Nova Scotia and, as the numbers show, we are in a position to do that."

Lia Milito has a partial scholarship to play basketball for SMU and says without it she would not be playing the game she loves while studying computer science.

"I was done with my degree," she says, "and can't really afford to just be going to school for another year that I don't really need."

Like Ryan, Milito believes that athletics are an essential part of the university experience for many students and that sports programs should be funded enough to provide financial help to athletes.

"To take out an athletics program or to cut its funding so much that it can't provide scholarships would be a non-trivial decision. It would make or break an athletics program."

Despite her love of sports, the high figures universities are spending on athletic scholarships sometimes worry Milito and she wonders if the balance is fair between athletic and academic funding.

But Ryan says the majority of CBU's athletic scholarships, like Acadia's, are derived from fundraising and only a small portion of the cash comes from the university's operational budget.

"On the one hand," says Milito, "I recognize that this is how some kids are going to be able to go to university. But I also think that the amount of money that some schools spend on sports is huge."

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