Types Of Athletic Scholarships

Types of athletic scholarships

Scholarship is a form of aid that is granted from the government, educational institution, and private corporate firms to help students pursue their studies even in the absence of adequate funds. There are various types of scholarships, which are granted under different circumstances namely nursing scholarships, art scholarships, corporate sponsored aid, disability scholarship, athletic scholarships etc.

Similarly, an athletic scholarship provides an aid to a student to attend a college and pursue his studies. This scholarship is predominantly awarded to those students who play any sport and have excelled in the same. There are various types of athletic scholarships are especially common in the United States of America. These scholarships are not provided in many countries.

For any scholarship to be awarded the student has to fulfill certain parameters and standard set by that organization or government. In United States of America, National Collegiate Athletic Association regulates different types of athletic scholarships. This NCAA is responsible for setting the parameters and standards that each student must fulfill to be eligible for the scholarship.

GPA, which is the acronym for grade point average and tests organized by the institute, help them judge the student who should be granted the scholarship. Since this is an investment, all of these institutes have very stringent policies and parameters for selecting the student who should be granted the scholarship. Athletic scholarships are very popular in United States of America. NCAA is a voluntary organization that is involved in organizing sports programs in most of the universities and colleges in The United States of America.

The idea of an athletic scholarship came up under the government of Theodore Roosevelt in the year 1903. His concern for the injuries sportspersons suffered from while playing made him get various universities together to take a step to make the athletics safer in college.

In 1973 the organization divided its membership under three different headers namely Division I, Division II, Division III. This was done to simplify the idea behind conferring scholarship to athletic students. Division I and Division II can offer athletic scholarships but Division III members could not offer any type of athletic scholarships in normal circumstances. In most of the countries, athletic scholarships are not as common as in U.S. In Canada, these scholarships are very restricted and in United Kingdom, it is considered to be illegal.

Division I has two different categories of scholarships namely Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Schools under FBS were allowed to offer scholarships to 85 players and schools under FCS schools were allowed to offer 63 scholarships. Schools, colleges and universities under these two different types of athletic scholarships also had some members who were conferred the right to prohibit the aid among some students.

Ivy League had prohibited service academics like army, air force and navy from the aid as they already received aid from service branch. NCAA can also suspend its member based on misconduct. Sports scholarship has been a topic of discussion amongst the critics.

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