DIII

An interesting question...

Most DIII Colleges are Private Schools, and are not governed by State Legislatures.

However, Wisconsin has a number of DIII Colleges within their Collegiate/University System.

A simple call or email to the School that you are interested in will answer your question accurately.

Private school versus public school.

A private D3 school has one tuition rate, regardless of residency. I live in Illinois. Augustana College is in Illinois and tuition rate is same for all.

Like this...

Tuition $46,039

If the D3 school is a public (or state school), like the Wisconsin league, they will have an out of state charge for tuition. Being on a sports team has no bearing on the tuition fee.

Like this...

In-state tuition 7,735 USD, Out-of-state tuition 16,607 USD

Room and board are the same for in state or out of state.

Is this part of the reason Whitewater has been able to obtain relatively high talented rosters?

Thanks guys. In retrospect that was a dumb question.

It was a good question. Sadly my favorite football documentary ever, Division 3: Football's Finest, does not address this aspect of the game.

D3 school are typically very good academic schools and smaller in enrollment. Kids that are attracted and recruited to D3 schools want that education and want to keep playing a sport.

And honestly they are probably not quite good enough to get a scholarship right out of high school.

But D3 sports usually do not have the time commitment that scholarship schools do. It can be a nice blend.

Division 3 sports cannot provide any athletic scholarship. All aid must be based on financial need (FAFSA), academic merit, or merit in an area like music, theatre, writing etc.

You will hear all kinds of stories that certain athletes are getting more money to attend a school but there really is not a general truth to that. A kid might receive a better financial package from one school than another but there needs to be a reason for the difference other than athletic ability.

And the school's ability to find that reason may be the difference between great and average programs. 

LOL Let’s go!

It’s a hilarious movie if you are into vulgar humor.

I guess theoretically it could be in the form of a specific merit scholarship i.e. goes to an athlete who exemplifies x, y, and z attributes for the school blah blah blah. 

I believe for it to be above water it would have to be open to any athlete in the school and externally funded...but it seems a little slippery to me

I have a buddy who went to an expensive private college that was a D.3 power. Toward the end of his junior he told the coach that he couldn't afford to come back for his senior year. The coach told him to come back the next day. The next day the coach had a financial aid announcement for a schollarship for student who was an Education major from (The Player's) County in (The player's) State who was planning to go into coaching. As luck would have it there was only one person in the school who fit that criteria. Where'd the money come from? Who knows? 

They do and they don't. The ones that are well-funded and in good locations are going to be dominant. The ones that are not, are going to struggle. I coached at one of the rare public D3s and we were not well-funded and in a horrible location and it was very difficult to get and keep good players and coaches there. We were in the middle of nowhere (2 hours from the nearest Wal-Mart, 3+ hours from any major cities) and had a limited salary pool for coaches, so our coaching staff was made up of really young coaches just getting started and really old coaches who couldn't keep a job anywhere else. Even though it was the cheapest 4-year school in the state and had some pretty good academic programs, it was hard to even get recruits to visit campus. We had a minimal recruiting budget and we had to take a beating from a D2 school every year (we lost 72-0 to a team who only won one other game that year) to help fund the entire athletic department. Add in the fact that we were in one of the toughest conferences in the country and 5-5 was a great year for us.

If my math is correct, there are 32 public D3 schools with football. 19 are in New England (with 4 of those being military/maritime schools), 9 are in Wisconsin, and the rest of the country combined has 4. UW-Whitewater, UW-Oshkosh, and UW-La Crosse are the only ones who have played for a national championship in the last 50 years. Obviously not the only measure of a successful program, but in all reality, all of the UW schools should be (and probably would be, if not for the politics of the UW system,) D2 based on their enrollments and funding. Many of the others may have had a solid season here and there but are typically bottom-feeders in their respective conferences. Being a public school is great if the state will provide you with lots of funding, but for most of these schools, that's not the case.

I think it’s pretty easy to figure it out from what I said. I’ll give another hint: one is in Ohio and one is in Texas.

You’re spot on though with the multiple levels of investment. Even at the FCS and D2 level, not every school gets all the scholarships the NCAA allows because their programs aren’t fully funded.

A place like Johns Hopkins... Super academic but pretty good at football. Are they figuring out a way to get kids "Leadership Grants"?

And believe it or not there are some good football players out there that are really smart and want to go to a really good school. Regardless of the schools cost.

A former head coach at University of Chicago (an extremely good academic school with unreal alumni connections) used to tell recruits "get a degree here and you will be on full scholarship for the rest of your life."