Division III
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- This article is about the NCAA division. For the Swedish football league, see Division 3.
Division III (or DIII) is a division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association of the United States.
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[edit] Membership
The division consists of colleges and universities that choose not to offer athletically related financial aid (athletic scholarships) to their student-athletes. There are over 420 member institutions, making DIII the largest of the three divisions sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
D-III schools range in size from less than 500 to over 10,000 students. D-III schools compete in athletics as a non-revenue making, extracurricular activity for students; hence, they may not offer athletic scholarships, they may not redshirt freshmen and they may not use endowments or funds whose primary purpose is to benefit their athletic programs.
- Conferences competing in Division III
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- American Southwest Conference
- Atlantic Central Football Conference
- Capitol Athletic Conference
- Centennial Conference
- College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin
- Empire 8 Conference
- Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference
- Illini-Badger Football Conference
- Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
- Lake Michigan Conference
- Liberty League
- Little East Conference
- Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association
- Middle Atlantic Conference
- Midwest Conference
- Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
- New England Football Conference
- New England Small College Athletic Conference
- New Jersey Athletic Conference
- North Atlantic Conference
- North Coast Athletic Conference
- Northern Athletics Conference
- Northwest Conference
- Ohio Athletic Conference
- Old Dominion Athletic Conference
- Presidents' Athletic Conference
- Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
- Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference
- USA South Athletic Conference
- University Athletic Association
- Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference
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[edit] Division III schools with Division I programs
Nine D-III schools have traditionally competed at the highest level of a particular sport and since the 1960s, when the NCAA separated into divisions, these schools' Division I programs have been allowed to continue as such while the remainder of their athletic program remains at Division III. They are:
- Clarkson University (men's and women's ice hockey)
- Colorado College (men's ice hockey and women's soccer)
- Hartwick College (men's soccer, women's water polo)
- Hobart College (men's lacrosse)
- Johns Hopkins University (men's and women's lacrosse)
- SUNY Oneonta (men's soccer)
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (men's and women's ice hockey)
- Rutgers University-Newark (men's volleyball)
- St. Lawrence University (men's and women's ice hockey)
- Union College (men's and women's ice hockey)
No other Division III school may also elevate individual sports programs to a higher level, and the above schools are limited to competing in D-I in those programs they traditionally have done so in. SUNY-Oneonta and Rutgers-Newark, which currently do not offer a women's sport at the D-I level, may choose to elevate a single women's program in the future if necessary for gender equity.
Football and basketball may not be grandfathered Division I programs because their revenue-enhancing potential would give them an unfair advantage over other Division III schools. In 1982, several Division III schools who competed at the Division I level in basketball, most notably Georgetown University, were forced to upgrade the rest of their athletic program to a Division I level.
[edit] Recent changes
In 2003, concerned about the direction of the Division, the Division III Presidents' Council, led by Middlebury College President John McCardell, acted to limit the length of the traditional and non-traditional seasons, eliminate redshirting, and redefine a season of participation, all of which were approved by a majority vote of the membership.
An additional proposal which would have eliminated the ability of the institutions listed above to offer athletic scholarships was rejected, though rules limiting the exception to only those schools currently offering D-I programs was approved. These actions took place at the January 2004 NCAA Convention.
