Cost of attendance stipends for University of Hawaii scholarship athletes will remain largely unchanged from recent years as the athletic department seeks to increase fundraising efforts to bolster recruiting.
Athletes at UH are to receive $1,000 to $2,000 each for the 2019-20 school year, depending on their sport, according to school figures.
For example, members of the men’s golf team will receive $1,000 and football players $1,500 each, while participants in 10 other sports, including women’s and men’s basketball and men’s and women’s volleyball, receive $2,000.
The stipends are available only to athletes on scholarship. UH has approximately 250 scholarship athletes spread across its 21 teams.
Under NCAA rules, maximum levels are set by each school’s financial aid office, with athletic departments providing funding levels based upon their ability to pay.
Figures can range significantly, with San Diego State and Utah State reporting stipends of $4,000 or more and UC Davis saying it does not pay stipends.
All schools in the Mountain West, where UH competes in football, provide some level of COA. In the Big West, where most of UH’s teams compete, the conference policy urges members to pay stipends for at least men’s and women’s basketball but does not require them.
If UH had the wherewithal, it could pay as much as $3,200 in some cases.
Athletic director David Matlin said this year the first $1,000 of each stipend comes out of the department’s budget, with the remainder produced through fundraising.
As the amount of stipends figures in recruiting, especially for schools such as UH that attract athletes from several miles away, schools, including Hawaii, are aiming to increase their payouts.
“David Matlin is very aware of the need to improve our cost of attendance, and there are individual sports that are fundraising COA,” said Rainbow Wahine basketball coach Laura Beeman. “We know there is a need to improve that and efforts are being made to increase that COA number.”
In 2015, largely prodded by the more well-heeled Power Five conference schools, the NCAA passed legislation permitting its members to pay stipends to scholarship athletes to cover expenses above the cost of tuition, room and board provided by basic scholarships.
These include out-of-pocket costs for home travel, phone, clothes and other expenses that family resources might not be able to meet.
With a couple of exceptions, notably the women’s golf and men’s tennis teams, who are receiving slightly more than before, the payout is similar to the 2016-17 school year. That year UH hiked its COA payments by more than 50 percent from the inaugural year.