Tag: Deals

  • Did Presidents Honor Campus Protest Deals?

    Did Presidents Honor Campus Protest Deals?

    Last spring, as pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments from coast to coast, a small number of college presidents struck agreements with students to get them to pack up their tents.

    But a year after those protests ended, have the presidents lived up to their promises?

    While the agreements varied widely by campus, the answer appears to mostly be yes, though many initiatives are still in progress.

    Divestment from Israel or companies with ties to the Israeli government or military was the most common demand student protesters made, and while some presidents agreed to hold votes on the issue, they made no promises about how such decisions would go. In the vast majority of cases, universities outright rejected divestment demands; on rare campuses where administrators agreed to divest, the actions were largely contained, focused mostly on defense contractors.

    Beyond divestment votes, colleges also struck agreements on multiple other points, including scholarships for displaced Palestinian students and increased support for Muslim students. Here’s a look at where such promises stand a year after the encampment protests ended.

    Northwestern University

    Few protest deals made more headlines than the one at Northwestern University, where President Michael Schill signed on to the Dearing Meadow agreement, as it came to be known, in late April of last year. Schill agreed to various concessions in exchange for protesters concluding the encampment. Those promises included support for Palestinian students and visiting Palestinian faculty, more space for Muslim student groups, and greater transparency in how the university invests its $14.3 billion endowment.

    In signing the agreement, Schill caught the attention of Congress, which summoned him for a hearing last May alongside the leaders of Rutgers University and the University of California, Los Angeles. Schill defended the agreement, pushing back on GOP scrutiny.

    The Daily Northwestern, the university’s student newspaper, confirmed that Schill has followed through on various initiativess; the university is currently supporting at least one Palestinian scholar and providing temporary space for Muslim students and the Middle Eastern and North African Student Association. (Renovation for a permanent space is ongoing.) The newspaper also confirmed that Northwestern added support for Jewish and Muslim students through the office of Religious and Spiritual Life, which funds weekly Shabbat dinners. But Northwestern officials have been reticent to discuss such efforts, ignoring requests for comment from the student newspaper and Inside Higher Ed.

    (Multiple student activists also did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed.)

    Despite promising more transparency on its endowment, Northwestern does not appear to be living up to that part of the deal. According to the agreement, Northwestern “will answer questions from any internal stakeholder about specific holdings, held currently or within the last quarter, to the best of its knowledge and to the extent legally possible.” Officials promised to respond to such inquiries within 30 days or, if unable to do so, to “provide a reason and a realistic timeline.”

    However, The Daily Northwestern reported last month that it sent officials questions about endowment holdings in February and did not receive a response within 30 days. The student newspaper noted that Northwestern did not provide a reason for the delay or a timeline for a response. A student reporter told Inside Higher Ed that the newspaper followed up on March 30 and the university then referred the questions to the Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility.

    The Daily Northwestern is still awaiting answers.

    Rutgers University

    Rutgers also struck a deal with encampment protesters last spring. As at Northwestern, that agreement landed then-president Jonathan Holloway in front of Congress mere weeks later.

    Rutgers leaders agreed to eight of the students’ 10 demands; while they rejected calls to divest from Israel and terminate a partnership with Tel Aviv University, they agreed to accept 10 displaced Gazan students, establish Arab cultural centers at each Rutgers campus, seek a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank, hire faculty members who specialize in Palestinian and Middle East studies, and release a statement calling for a ceasefire, among other concessions.

    Rutgers officials said all of the agreed-upon initiatives are currently in progress.

    Rutgers agreed to eight out of 10 of the protesters’ demands.

    “Work continues to advance a series of actions we believe will strengthen and build upon positive change across our community,” spokesperson Megan Schumann told Inside Higher Ed. “These efforts are grounded in the university’s values of free expression, inclusion, and mutual respect—and in the fundamental right of all members of our community to learn, teach, and carry out the university’s essential work in a safe and supportive environment.

    University of Oregon

    At the University of Oregon, the administration’s agreement with protesters included a statement calling for a ceasefire and condemning genocide, the addition of visiting scholars with expertise in Palestine and Israel, support for academics displaced by the war, new faculty hires with related expertise, new cultural spaces, and more.

    Officials said they have lived up to their end of the agreement, though some initiatives are still underway. They noted that the university has already awarded its first International Crisis Response Scholarship, which was established by the agreement to support students affected by the conflict, and the recipient has begun studies at UO. The university has also funded two speaking events as part of its Special Initiative on Constructively Engaging the Conflict and the Pursuit of Peace in Palestine/Israel. Another five proposals for speaking events have already been approved, according to officials. Past and upcoming events have focused on topics such as Palestine and the future of U.S. campus activism and Palestinian identity.

    Other efforts, such as faculty recruiting, are ongoing, with several academic units submitting hiring-plan proposals that are undergoing a standard review process. Plans to forge partnerships with Birzeit University in the West Bank and several universities in Israel are also underway.

    Evergreen State College

    The public institution in Washington agreed to various concessions in a deal with protesters. Officials launched four committees to work on different issues, including “divestment from companies that profit from gross human rights violations and/or the occupation of Palestinian territories,” according to language in the signed protest agreement. Another task force will develop policies to determine whether the college should accept or reject grants that “facilitate illegal occupations abroad, limit free speech, or support oppression of minorities.” The other two task forces are slated to review policing at Evergreen State and to develop a new “non–law enforcement” model for crisis responses.

    President John Carmichael also kept his promise to protesters by making a statement on the bloodshed in Gaza last May, in which he called for a ceasefire, the release of hostages and the restoration of international law, which he wrote “requires that the International Court of Justice fairly adjudicate charges of genocide.” He also urged the university community to be “on guard against Islamophobia and antisemitism as we engage with each other in this moment.”

    Those efforts are ongoing; the agreement provided a timeline for the task forces to complete their work, with deadlines to adopt their recommendations ranging from spring 2026 to 2030.

    California State University, Sacramento

    When Sacramento State struck an agreement with pro-Palestinian protesters last May, students framed the move as divestment in a social media post. But a more accurate reading would be that the university determined it did not have direct investments in companies profiting off the war effort and declared that it would not pursue such holdings. The university also established a “de minimis policy for indirect investments that prioritizes socially responsible investments,” a spokesperson wrote to Inside Higher Ed.

    Sacramento State president Luke Wood said at the time, “The finance committee of our University Foundation has been so committed to socially responsible investments that we have no direct investments in any of the companies about which many of our students have concerns.” He also announced a policy to formalize socially responsible investment practices, in order to “avoid funding students’ education based on companies that profit from war and desolation,” the spokesperson said.

    University leaders announced multiple other actions at the same time, which Wood said grew out of listening sessions with over 1,500 students, faculty, staff and alumni that began when he arrived the previous year. Those changes include introducing more halal and kosher food options on campus, new cultural centers and training on Islamophobia and antisemitism, as well as university task forces to address both Islamophobia and antisemitism. Other efforts include the development of recruitment plans to attract Palestinian and Jewish students to the university.

    (This section has been updated to incorporate the university’s response.)

    Sonoma State University

    Sonoma State University may offer the most visible case of promises made and broken.

    Last spring, then-president Mike Lee agreed to demands from protesters that included reviewing contracts to consider divestment opportunities, introducing a Palestinian studies curriculum and adding Students for Justice in Palestine members to a Sonoma State advisory council. Most controversially, he agreed to what was effectively an academic boycott, promising not to “pursue or engage in any study abroad programs, faculty exchanges, or other formal collaborations that are sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions.”

    However, the agreement was not approved by his bosses in the California State University system, prompting officials to walk the deal back and Lee to retire suddenly. A new deal put forward by an acting president who replaced Lee scrapped much of the prior agreement.

    A campus spokesperson noted that despite the changes to the initial agreement, SSU Foundation officials met with students to discuss investment holdings and launched other actions, including a three-part lecture series providing “differing viewpoints on the situation in Gaza and differing religious perspectives,” as well as new groups to support Jewish life.

    A photo of pro-Palestinian protesters at Brown University.

    Protesters at Brown University demand divestment, April 29, 2024.

    Joseph Prezioso/AFP/Getty Images

    Divestment Demands

    Multiple universities agreed to hold votes on some form of divestment in response to protesters, including Brown University, the University of Minnesota, the New School and others.

    Governing boards, however, have largely rejected divestment except in a few cases.

    The University of San Francisco announced several weeks ago that it would divest from four U.S. companies with ties to the Israeli military: Palantir, L3Harris, GE Aerospace and RTX Corporation. The university plans to sell off direct investments in those companies by June 1.

    Nearby San Francisco State University has also adopted a form of divestment; in December, the public university’s governing board voted to add new investment screening policies. Now SFSU will no longer invest in companies that make 5 percent or more of their revenues from weapons manufacturing. SFSU also adopted more transparency around endowment holdings.



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  • College Athletes Can Now Make Millions Off Sponsorship Deals – The 74

    College Athletes Can Now Make Millions Off Sponsorship Deals – The 74


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    $390,000 to Jaylon Tyson, a former basketball guard at UC Berkeley, from a group of private donors.

    $3,000 to Jordan Chiles, a UCLA gymnast and Olympic gold-medal winner, from Grammarly, an AI writing company. 

    $390 to Mekhi Mays, a former Cal State Long Beach sprinter, from a local barbecue joint. 

    These payments — derived from data that public universities provided to CalMatters — were part of “name, image and likeness deals” requiring students to create favorable posts on social media. 

    Such sponsorship deals were unheard of just four years ago. In 2021, California enacted a law allowing athletes to make these kinds of brand deals. It was the first state to pass such a law, prompting similar changes across the country. 

    This is the first-ever look at what many California athletes have actually made. University records show that money is flowing, but how much college athletes earn depends largely on the popularity of the sport, the gender and star power of its players and the fanbase of the university. While UCLA gymnasts earned over $2 million in the last three school years, university records show that players on the UCLA women’s water polo team earned just $152 during the same time frame, despite winning the national championship last year. 

    For companies, these name, image and likeness deals are akin to paying any other celebrity or professional athlete to promote a product. University alumni and sports fans can’t give money directly to a student athlete — at least not yet — but they are allowed to make name, image and likeness deals. Many universities have private donor groups, known as collectives or booster clubs, that offer athletes money, sometimes more than $400,000 in a single transaction, in exchange for an autograph or participation in a brief charity event. Often, those deals are a pretext to send money to top-tier players and discourage them from seeking better deals at other colleges.

    CalMatters reached out to every public and private university in the state with Division 1 teams, where the potential for profit is typically highest, and requested data that shows how much money each of its student athletes have made since 2021. State law requires all student athletes to report to their school any compensation they receive from their name, image and likeness, and public universities are required to disclose certain kinds of data upon request. Private universities, such as Stanford University and the University of Southern California, are not required to disclose any data about their students’ earnings. 

    All of the public Division 1 universities responded to CalMatters’ inquiry, though they did not all provide the same degree of transparency. San Jose State and Cal State Northridge said they had no records of any deals.

    There’s no consequence for students who fail to report what are known as NIL deals, so the data from public institutions may be incomplete. Still, certain trends emerge: 

    • College athletes at the state’s public universities received millions of dollars from collectives or booster clubs. At four University of California schools, around 70% or more of all compensation came from these collectives, according to university records. That’s just below national trends, according to a report by Opendorse, a tech company that tracks students’ deals. 
    • Male basketball players earned the most. While football is more popular and lucrative, nationally, many public Division 1 schools in California lack a football team. The football data may also be incomplete. For instance, all football players at UC Berkeley reported making a total of just over $113,000 since 2021 — less than what all San Diego State players made — even though Berkeley is in a more prominent conference. 
    • For high-profile football or basketball players in particular, it’s becoming more common for students to transfer multiple times, often in search of better name, image and likeness deals. Some California institutions, such as UC Davis and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, have seen top athletes transfer colleges or threaten to transfer in order to attain better compensation elsewhere.
    • Except for a few star players, such as Chiles, most female college athletes made very little, according to the data provided to CalMatters. 
    • Collectively, athletes at UCLA and UC Berkeley earned more than double what those attending other UC and California State University campuses made. Some donors, such as those supporting Sacramento State and UC San Diego, have rapidly raised money to compete, while at other schools, athletic directors say they’ll never be able to guarantee such high-dollar deals. 

    Schools often removed any information that could identify an individual student. While UCLA generally did not provide the individual names of its athletes, the school was more transparent than most and shared the date of each transaction, the name of the brand or company, the amount of money it gave, and the sport. In February, a UCLA gymnast reported receiving $250,000 from the beverage company Bubbl’r. Since then, Chiles has promoted that brand, repeatedly. In May, a UCLA gymnast reported receiving $210,000 from the cosmetic brand Milani for “social media” — just a few months before Chiles posted a video on Instagram, promoting its makeup. One or more members of the UCLA gymnastics team have also reported deals with the food company Danone for $300,000 and with the health care company Sanofi for $285,000. 

    Fresno State shared less information. In the 2021-22 academic year, the Fresno State women’s basketball team raked in over $1.1 million from multiple name, image and likeness deals, but the university did not disclose which players were involved or how many were paid. After influencers and former basketball players Haley and Hanna Cavinder transferred to the University of Miami in April 2022, the number and dollar amount of deals for the Fresno team diminished. In the 2023-24 academic year, the team made just over $1,000 from 10 different deals.

    Money from boosters or collectives is the hardest to trace. In May, for example, a group of UCLA donors gave an undisclosed football player $450,000 for “social media.” 

    While private universities are not required to disclose students’ earnings, market estimates from On3, a media and technology company focused on college sports, say the highest-earning Stanford University athlete, basketball player Maxime Raynaud, could collect $1.5 million in the next 12 months. The top USC athlete, football player Jayden Maiava, could make $603,000 in the next year, according to the same estimates. These numbers are based on an algorithm that uses aggregate deals from college athletes across the country. Nationwide, the Opendorse report estimates that college athletes will earn $1.65 billion in the 2024-25 academic year. 

    Soon, college athletes may make even more. A high-profile class-action lawsuit will likely allow schools to pay athletes directly, while still classifying them as students, not employees. If the proposed settlement agreement goes into effect, students could see payouts as early as this fall. 

    If a school pays a student directly, the money should be divided roughly proportional to the number of male and female athletes, the Biden administration said in a U.S. Department of Education fact sheet issued in January. The page no longer exists. 

    In the last few months, attorneys have rescinded federal labor petitions asking that USC and Dartmouth College student athletes be reclassified as employees, but new cases are likely on the horizon, said Mit Winter, an attorney who specializes in name, image and likeness law: “I do think at some point — two years, five years, whatever it is — at least some college athletes will be employees.”

    A Times Square billboard reads: NIL has begun

    For decades, college sports have been a big business, though most of the money flowed to universities, not students. Nationally, Division 1 universities reported $17.5 billion in athletic revenue in 2022, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). That’s more than the gross domestic product of 83 countries. For schools with top-performing football programs, such as UCLA and Berkeley, broadcast deals and other kinds of marketing represent over a third of total revenue. 

    Before California’s law went into effect, college athletes weren’t allowed to profit off their sport, though they frequently received scholarships equal to the cost of college tuition. On July 1, 2021 the new law took effect, and Haley and Hanna Cavinder were the first to benefit, signing deals with Boost Mobile, a cell phone company, and Sixstar, a nutrition company, just after the stroke of midnight. A Times Square billboard proclaimed they were the first such deals in the country. 

    Over the past four years, other California college athletes have signed advertising deals with clothing brands such as Crocs, Heelys and Aeropostale and food brands such as Liquid I.V. and Jack in the Box. FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, signed contracts with at least six players on the UCLA women’s basketball team in 2021. In 2022, the Biden campaign gave a UCLA gymnast $7,000, but public records did not disclose the purpose of the transaction. No other politicians appeared in any university’s data.

    Last year, Visit Fresno County, a nonprofit that promotes tourism, paid former Fresno State football players Dean Clark and Kosi Agina just under $10,000 to post Instagram videos about a local farmer’s market and a minor league baseball team, according to President and CEO Lisa Oliveira. She said the posts were so successful that she asked Agina to make another video, promoting a hiking trail in the Sierra National Forest. 

    But much of the money for students’ name, image and likeness doesn’t come from brands at all — it’s from private donors. Philanthropist and entertainment lawyer Mark Kalmansohn has given nearly $150,000 in 12 different transactions to athletes on UCLA’s volleyball, softball and women’s basketball teams since 2022, according to the data, which runs through May of last year. In an interview with CalMatters, Kalmansohn said he’s given more than $175,000 since May. “Women’s sports were almost always treated in a second-hand nature and given inferior resources,” he said, adding that his philanthropy is about “women’s rights.”

    In exchange for money, he asks each recipient to issue a free license of their name, image and likeness to a nonprofit organization that’s relevant to the athlete’s sport. But he said that’s not the norm. “In men’s football and men’s basketball, it’s pretty obvious that money is not for an ‘appearance’.” Instead, he explained that it’s a way to support the player and keep the team competitive. 

    Most donors give money to specific athletes through a collective, where the donors’ identities are largely hidden. At UCLA, public data through the 2023-24 academic year shows that a collective known as the Men of Westwood channeled nearly $2 million in private donations to the football, basketball and baseball teams. At Berkeley, collectives gave over $1.3 million to athletes since the 2022-23 academic year — the vast majority of which went to the men’s basketball team. 

    Supporting ‘elite talent’ at UC and Cal State

    For years, NCAA rules made it difficult for college athletes to transfer schools, but in 2021, right around the time that California started to allow name, image and likeness deals, the NCAA eased those rules. The number of students who transfer suddenly jumped in 2021 and has ticked up each year since, according to NCAA data. In practice, the new rules means that a well-endowed collective can lure athletes who want to make more money. 

    This year, over 11% of all Division 1 football players have tried to transfer colleges, an increase from the previous year, said Matt Kraemer, whose organization, The Portal Report, uses social media posts and tips from insiders to gauge college athletes’ transfer activity. Quarterbacks are even more likely to try to transfer, Kraemer said.

    For institutions like UC Davis, the threat of losing a top athlete can be costly. Late in the 2023-24 academic year, donors from other universities promised top athletes lucrative deals if they agreed to transfer, so UC Davis formed a collective, Aggie Edge, to make counter-offers, said Athletic Director Rocko DeLuca. “It’s a means to retain elite talent here at Davis.”

    DeLuca said the collective gave men’s basketball guard TY Johnson $50,000 and UC Davis running back Lan Larison $25,000. Those transactions were for “social media, appearances, autographs,” according to the university’s data. 

    So far, all other UC Davis athletes — more than 700 students over 25 sports — have reported just under $19,000 in deals since 2021. A few other athletes received products, such as a free cryotherapy session or a commission based on sales.

    In December, former UC Berkeley quarterback Fernando Mendoza transferred to Indiana University, where he later signed a name, image and likeness deal with a collective for an undisclosed amount. UC Berkeley then recruited former Ohio State quarterback Devin Brown the day after he won a national championship. It’s not clear if the Berkeley collective offered Brown a deal, since the university’s data doesn’t name Brown. 

    Justin DiTolla, Berkeley’s associate athletic director, said the university is “not affiliated with the collective” and that the university provides “equal support to all student athletes.” “We recognize that there is a difference in NIL support,” he said, “But it isn’t under our scope or umbrella.” The Berkeley collective, California Legends, declined to comment.

    At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, some football players sought more money through a name, image and likeness deal by transferring to another school, but they didn’t all succeed, said Don Oberhelman, the university’s athletic director. “That’s the dirty little secret of all of this: the number of kids who blow an opportunity.”

    This fall, nine football players at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo announced their intention to transfer, he said. Six of them found a new university, he said, including University of Texas El Paso, San Diego State, Stanford, and Washington State — but three of them never received an offer from another school. 

    Oberhelman said that his football coach begins recruiting a replacement the moment a player announces his intention to transfer. If that student doesn’t end up transferring, he may lose his spot on the football team and the entirety of his athletic scholarship, which can be up to $30,000 a year. 

    “There’s raw emotion involved in these kinds of decisions,” he said. “I don’t think that’s how we would operate, but I can see a lot of people say, ‘You broke up with us.’” 

    Oberhelman said he doesn’t know what happened to the three players from the football team who failed to transfer. “For me, it would boil down to: Did we promise that money to someone else? Did we find another transfer or a high school person to replace you? If we did, that would put your future financial aid with us in jeopardy.”

    Small-town name, image and likeness deals 

    Outside of top football and men’s basketball programs, many of California’s college athletes vie for smaller name, image and likeness deals, often with local businesses, lesser-known clothing or athletic brands, or anything else they can find.

    Former Berkeley softball player Randi Roelling got $50 from one woman to give a pitching lesson to her daughter. In July 2023, chiropractor Lance Casazza started giving out free sessions to at least one Sacramento State football player in exchange for social media posts.

    Annika Shah, a basketball player at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, got her first deal through a local restaurant, Jewel of India, which occasionally has a pop-up tent outside the college gym. “I just said, ‘Hey I can market you. Let’s think of a cool slogan to put out.’” Customers who ask to “swish with Shah” at the checkout counter get a discount on their meal, she said. Shah doesn’t get any money, she said, but she does get free food whenever she visits. 

    “It was just a cool relationship and connection that I made with this family and the owners of Jewel of India, where they just want to help me out and I want to help them.” 

    Walking around campus, friends jokingly refer to Shah as their own “Jewel of India” and she likes it. “It’s such a marketable slogan now, and it kind of identifies who I am.”

    Many Division 1 schools have their own websites where customers can buy gear with an athlete’s name on it, but last fall, no such platform existed at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, said Shah, so she created her own. She partnered with a company, Cloud 9 Sports, and launched her own apparel brand. It’s brought in about $2,000 in sales so far, but after the university and Cloud 9 Sports take a cut, Shah said she’s left with about $800. 

    Shah said she was never told to report any of her monetary or in-kind contributions. After CalMatters asked, Oberhelman, the athletic director, said the school is now requiring it. “We haven’t done a great job following up because we’re just not going to have student athletes that are getting even five-figure deals,” he said. 

    Oberhelman said he only knew of eight deals, each for $2,000, all to the men’s football team from a group of private donors.

    Fresno State provided more data than Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, but it did not designate which deals came from its collective, known as Bulldog Bread. On its website the collective says it has raised more than $690,000 in corporate donations for Fresno State. At the top tier, that includes money from former Fresno State quarterbacks David and Derek Carr, property developer Lance Kashian, and construction company Tarlton and Son, Inc. The collective recently launched a vodka brand in partnership with a distillery, where a portion of all proceeds support students’ name, image and likeness deals.

    Athletes at UC Santa Barbara have reported $1,800 from their collective, Gold & Blue, but many other transactions reported by the school provide few details. According to the school’s data, an unnamed person or group made 15 deals with one or more members of the UC Santa Barbara men’s basketball team, totaling over $50,000 in “appearance fees” for an event last August associated with Heal the Ocean, a local environmental nonprofit. 

    The organization’s executive director, Hillary Hauser, said the nonprofit made no such contribution and had no events in August. University spokesperson Kiki Reyes said it’s “possible” that a collective made those payments, but she refused to respond to CalMatters’ questions regarding Hauser’s statement the event never occurred. 

    From August 2023 to August 2024, male basketball and baseball athletes at UC Santa Barbara reported roughly $500,000 in compensation for appearance fees related to various charities. Over the same time frame, all other athletes reported receiving free products, sales referrals, and cash payments totaling about $1,000.

    At UCLA, the CEO of the Men of Westwood collective, Ken Graiwer, is listed in university records as the “point of contact” for a $450,000 contribution, distributed over six transactions in the 2023-24 academic year, to the men’s basketball team for “public appearances.” For each of those transactions, the university’s data lists the Team First Foundation, a sports nonprofit, as the vendor. Neither UCLA nor the Team First Foundation responded to questions about who made the payment. 

    A few months before those transactions, the Men of Westwood posted a few photos on its Instagram account, showing UCLA men’s basketball players on the court with smiling children from the Team First Foundation programs. In the post, the Men of Westwood said it was “NIL outreach.” 

    California universities try to ‘stay competitive’

    Since becoming legal in 2021, the market for name, image and likeness compensation has exploded. Sports commentators, attorneys, and athletic directors say the landscape is a kind of “wild West” or “gold rush”: The money is pouring in, but the regulations are sparse or evolving.

    CalMatters has partial data from the 2024-25 academic year, but early indicators suggest that even more cash will soon flow to players. In September, a group of Sacramento State alumni, including some state lawmakers, said they raised over $35 million in one day for name, image and likeness deals. Cal State Bakersfield and UC San Diego recently formed their own collectives too.

    Last year, former Democratic Sen. Nancy Skinner of Berkeley — one of the co-authors of the watershed name, image and likeness law — proposed a new bill to gather more data about spending by collectives and its impact on women’s sports. Newsom vetoed the bill, saying “Further changes to this dynamic should be done nationally.” 

    Initially, the NCAA tried to prevent colleges from directly assisting athletes with deals, but the association has eased those regulations recently, blurring the lines between universities and the private collectives that support them. Many states have passed laws explicitly allowing universities to make deals directly with students. In October, Skinner and former Democratic Sen. Steven Bradford wrote a letter to California universities, encouraging them to do the same. 

    “I strongly urge California schools to make full use of (the watershed law) to stay competitive in college sports, especially now that other states are copying California and allowing their schools to make direct NIL deals with their student athletes,” said Skinner in a press release about the letter.

    This spring, California District Judge Claudia Wilken is expected to approve a settlement between athletes and the NCAA that would further expand the ways universities can pay their players. In the proposed settlement, a college could directly spend up to a combined $20.5 million per year on payments to all of its athletes. The spending limit would grow over time.

    Regardless of the settlement, athletic directors at many of California’s public institutions, such as Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal State Bakersfield, said they don’t plan on giving any more money directly to students because their athletic programs lack the cash. “They’re already on full scholarship, so there aren’t any more existing dollars we can really offer that person,” said Oberhelman, with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Even if the university did have the money, he said he’s concerned about the legal implications of paying students directly. “Are they going to get a W-2 now? Are we paying workers comp? Nobody seems to have answered a lot of these questions.”

    DiTolla, at Berkeley, said the university will start paying its athletes once the settlement is finalized. UC San Diego joined Division 1 sports last year, and Athletic Director Earl Edwards said it is “seriously considering” paying its athletes too “if that’s what we need to do to be competitive.” UCLA refused to comment on the proposed settlement.

    USC Senior Associate Athletic Director Cody Worsham said the university will “invest the full permissible $20.5 million in 2025-26.” Stanford refused to answer any questions.

    While no Division 1 school in California has shared details about how it plans to pay its athletes, experts, such as attorney Mit Winter, say the proposed settlement is unlikely to change the current disparities in college sports, especially within the four most lucrative and dominant athletic conferences, known as the Power Four. Stanford, USC, UC Berkeley and UCLA are all in the Power Four. 

    For female rowers like Anaiya Singer, a freshman at UCLA, the disparities among men’s and women’s sports — and between football, basketball and everyone else — are no surprise. “Those big sports do bring in the most revenue, and they’re the most watched,” she said, while acknowledging that other athletes, such as fellow rowers, “deserve much more than we’re getting.” 

    Singer said she’s been working on building her social media brand and has nearly 3,000 followers on TikTok and just over 1,300 on Instagram. A few “very small companies” reached out to her through TikTok about promoting beauty products, but none of the brands felt like a good fit, she said. She has yet to agree to any deals or receive any funding from a collective.

    Neither have most of her peers. The UCLA women’s rowing team has reported less than $500 in name, image and likeness compensation since 2021.

    In the proposed settlement, each school will each be able to independently determine how to distribute their funds, but Winter said universities will likely follow their peers. “If you’re in UCLA, Berkeley….you’re in the Power Four and you’re going to have to stay competitive in recruiting,” he said. 

    “Most of the Power Four schools have all sort of landed on a similar way they’re going to pay that money out,” he added: 75% to the football team, 15% to the basketball team, around 5% to women’s basketball, and 5% to all other sports.

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • Raw Deals in Higher Education

    Raw Deals in Higher Education

    In a 2022 interview with Gary Stocker of College Vialbility App, we discussed the idea of bad deals in higher education. And as the College Meltdown advances, we expect many more bad deals to occur, both for institutions and consumers.   

    Already, in early 2025, we have seen documentation of the collapse of St. Augustine University, a 146-year old HBCU in North Carolina. We expect many more collapses and closures like this, and difficult mergers, to occur in the coming years. The immense greed we saw in for-profit higher education a decade ago we’ll see in public and non-profit private education.

    HEI will attempt to document these events not merely as news, but as part of a larger pattern of criminality in US higher education, not just at the institutional level, but at the state and federal level, and with predatory banks and other investors who are working on these deals behind the scenes.  We also plan to explain how this predatory behavior damages communities. Communities with people.  

     

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