But even as college sports celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2022 and is widely celebrated for its monumental achievements, the US government appears to have hobbled itself by failing to enforce the law and by dedicating insufficient resources to it, as a critical government watchdog report paints a picture.
A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit examined 26 universities’ Title IX compliance agreements aimed at improving gender equality. While Title IX covers education in general, the GAO audit focused on OCR’s deficiencies in monitoring gender equality in college sports.
In 10 of those cases, it took at least a year for OCR to respond, and in five cases, no one had heard from the agency for more than five years. Advocates blame the workload on a small staffing.
“Such delays may cause universities to fail to address compliance concerns and may hinder attempts to quickly address potential compliance issues,” the GAO said.
● After complaints that the girls' softball team had lower quality facilities and fewer coaches than the boys' baseball team, OCR delayed for years, and it took nearly seven years to approve the school's equity plan, “creating significant delays in the university's ability to address compliance concerns.”
The university was hesitant to upgrade its women's athletic facilities, which were inferior to the men's, by building separate women's locker rooms because administrators had not been informed by OCR about compliance issues. At the time of GAO's investigation, “more than two years later, OCR had not provided any feedback to the university.”
● A long wait for the university, which had to get OCR's permission to add new sports for girls in order to provide more athletic opportunities for girls: “The university waited for feedback from OCR before taking action to add the sport, which resulted in a 10-month delay in hiring a new coach.”
Education officials agreed with GAO's recommendation to establish a timeline for responding to colleges and universities. “OCR officials told us that resource constraints may delay communication with colleges and universities,” the GAO reported.
A spokesman for the department did not directly respond to questions from The Washington Post about the long delay in responding to universities. “The department remains committed to carrying out its mandate from Congress to protect all students from discrimination,” the spokesman said in an email.
But too little funding for the work can hinder impartiality obligations and even be counterproductive.
“OCR has been woefully underfunded for many years, especially when compared to staff numbers and complaint volumes,” a coalition of 91 organizations from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights wrote to President Biden in February, urging him to double funding for OCR.
“OCR has received more than six times the number of complaints in 2022 as it received in 1981, yet staffing levels have been cut in half during that same period,” the letter states. “OCR must be provided with the resources it needs urgently to address this situation.”
Biden's fiscal 2025 budget not only doubles OCR's funding, it increases it to $162 million, $22 million more than the previous year.
The current explosion of interest in women's basketball, sparked by Caitlin Clark's history-making, high-profile play, is one example of how the law is transforming not only college sports but ultimately professional sports as well.
“Title IX cannot be separated from the growing popularity of girls' basketball today,” said Shiwali Patel, director of safe and inclusive schools at the National Women's Law Center.
Availability of athletic opportunities and resources as envisioned by Title IX impacts participation. This is reflected in GAO data: women make up 56% of all undergraduate students, but only 42% of student-athletes are women. These numbers are reversed for men, who make up 44% of all students and 58% of student-athletes.
Moreover, 52 years after the law was enacted, gender and racial disparities remain. The most recent Women's Sports Foundation (WSF) document, released in 2011, stated that since Title IX was enacted, “sports opportunities for female athletes of color have increased at twice the rate of white female athletes.” Although female athletes of color make up more than a quarter of female students, they receive less than a fifth of the “female sports opportunities.” The report did not break down athletes of color by race or ethnicity.
In 2021, Sedona Prince, then a basketball player at the University of Oregon, posted a video showing a large, well-equipped March Madness fitness facility for men and a single rack of dumbbells for women, exposing the inequality in opportunities and facilities between men and women in a shameful way. NCAA officials apologized. The association did not respond to The Washington Post's request for comment.
The GAO report comes amid a booming new revenue stream for college athletes, including new rules allowing college athletes to be paid royalties directly. Name, likeness and image restrictions, commonly referred to as NILs, reinforce the importance of efficient and strong Title IX enforcement.
Last week, the NCAA approved direct compensation payments from universities to players, quickly dispelling the outdated notion that college athletes are amateurs. Starting in 2021, college athletes are allowed to personally benefit from NIL programs, which are typically run by endowment-funded institutions, through merchandise endorsements, for example.
If women don’t have equal access to athletics in college, they won’t have equal opportunities to use and benefit from their athletic talents. And as the WSF report shows, this situation is even worse for Black and Hispanic athletes.
For Megan Kissel, senior director at the American Association of University Women, Title IX “is a promise, and it's a promise that we're always working to achieve. I think what the (GAO) report shows is that we're not there yet.”
It also shows that an under-resourced OCR cannot do enough to turn promises into reality.
