The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights recently confirmed that it had found Colorado State University in violation of Title IX by offering too few athletic scholarships to its female student-athletes. The law requires scholarship dollars to be proportionate to the gender ratio of athletes. 48.5% of CSU's student athletes are female, but women receive 42.73% of the university's athletic scholarship dollars.
The school has reportedly decided to correct this inequity by replacing its women's water polo team with a women's soccer team, because the NCAA allows up to 14 scholarships in women's soccer, while only 8 in women's water polo. University officials explained that they lacked the financial resources to keep water polo and add another women's sport to which it could allocate more scholarship money.
There's no mention of CSU having considered scaling back scholarship dollars available for men's sports. This would be permissible under NCAA rules, which only cap scholarships and do not require them.
