When you think of sports at SRU, what do you think of? Maybe it's football or basketball. Perhaps it is track or lacrosse. SRU has 10 sports and 548 student athletes. Among those student athletes, 311 are women and 237 are men.
However, there are still a larger number of scholarships given out to men than there are to women athletes. This graph below shows the distribution and it accounts for the average number of scholarships offered to each sport within the past ten years.
HERE is a data representation of the men's versus women's scholarships given at Slippery Rock University.
However, as the data research continued, it was discovered that women's scholarships often are worth more than men's scholarships. Andrea Miller, Director of Compliance and Assistant Athletic Director at Slippery Rock University, said that even though sports such as football have a lot of scholarships given out, there are more female sports and also more scholarship money given to women's sports. With that being said, those numbers still do not exactly match up. According to last year's EADA report, more scholarship money was still given to men's sports, despite the fact that there are less men's sports and fewer male athletes compared to female athletes. Miller said that the numbers are proportional not only to the number of student athletes and sports, but also the number off students enrolled in the University. The number of undergraduate student currently enrolled at SRU is 3,294 males and 4,315 females. The numbers are still not exactly proportional.
This more equal distribution is displayed above or by clicking here.
Miller explained the difference between the men's and women's sports at SRU and also explained that there is more than just scholarships when it comes to the difference between men and women sports.
"The coach salaries and operation fees are higher for women sports," Miller said. "This males up for the fact that women get slightly less money in scholarships.
Holly McCoy, Director of Title IX said that there was a lawsuit involving scholarship equity in 2001 and that she oversees the process to make sure this does not happen again.
McCoy and Miller both said they plan to keep up with the data so that SRU can be an equal community, with fairness among men's and women's sports. Last year's data will be published in the coming months.