Title: 50 Years After Title IX--Equality in College Athletics Is Still A
Hurdle

Description: Title IX prohibits discrimination in education programs
based on sex. It's probably best known for its role in sports--helping to
increase girls' and women's participation in athletics. But even after
50 years since its passage by Congress, there are still questions about
whether Title IX is as effective as it should be and whether schools are
complying with it. We learn more about Title IX enforcement from GAO's
Melissa Emery-Arras. 

Related Work: GAO-24-105994, College Athletics: Education Should Improve
Its Title IX Enforcement Efforts

Released: May 2024

{Music}

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] There are still concerns about whether women have
equal opportunities to participate in college athletics.

[Holly Hobbs:] Hi, and welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report--your source for
fact-based nonpartisan news and information from the U.S. Government
Accountability Office. I'm your host, Holly Hobbs. Title IX prohibits
discrimination in education programs based on sex. And it's probably
best known for its role in sports--helping to increase girls' and women's
participation in athletics. But even after 50 years since its passage by
Congress, there are still questions about whether Title IX is as
effective as it should be and whether schools are complying with it. Our
new report looks at those very questions. And joining us to tell us more
is GAO's Melissa Emery-Arras, an expert on higher education. Thanks for
joining us.

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] Thank you for having me here, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, Melissa, Title IX was passed in 1972--that's 52 years
ago. Why are we looking at this now or why are we still looking at it?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] I think there's been a concern about whether
there's a level playing field for women in college sports. You may
remember a few years ago, a video went viral showing training facilities
for women's basketball versus men's. And the women's training facilities
paled in comparison, right. So, there is this outcry. There's this
concern. Are female athletes getting equal opportunities in college
sports? So we did this work to see how it's looking now.

[Holly Hobbs:] So, how is it looking now? How does women's participation
compare to men's? 

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] We found that women participate in college
athletics less than men do. And this is especially interesting because
more women go to college than men. Women make up 56% of all college
students, so more than half of college students are women, yet they only
make up 42% of the athletes at schools. And we found that the gap is
especially significant at mid-sized schools and at schools that have
football teams. Those schools are more likely to have a gap between the
participation rates and the enrollment rates for women.

[Holly Hobbs:] How does Title IX fit into that? Like, how is Title IX
supposed to address the gaps?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] Title IX is supposed to stop discrimination in
education programs that are funded with federal dollars and college
sports are considered part of those education programs. And so the goal
is to make sure that women have equal opportunities to participate in
college sports. 

[Holly Hobbs:] So Title IX is the law. Who is responsible for enforcing
that law? And how do they do it?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] The Department of Education is responsible. And
they have an Office for Civil Rights that is responsible for overseeing
Title IX compliance in college sports. And what they primarily do is
they investigate complaints. So you could have a complaint from a
student, a parent, a staff member, someone who may have experienced
discrimination in college sports, someone who may have witnessed
discrimination. They file a complaint and the Department of Education's
Office of Civil Rights then investigates that complaint.

[Holly Hobbs:] What happens when the Office for Civil Rights finds a
violation or an issue out of school?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] They develop a resolution agreement, and this is
an agreement with the college. The college signs it. And it basically
outlines the steps that the college will take to address the problem,
right. To make things right for students. The college is then
responsible for updating Education over time with what it plans to do to
implement that agreement. So they may send updates saying, you know,
'Hey, we're thinking about improving the women's locker room space.
We're thinking about adding a women's sport.' And then the Department of
Education can say, 'That sounds good. That will help address our
concern.'

[Holly Hobbs:] So we looked at how the Office for Civil Rights monitors
schools. Did we find any issue with that effort?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] We did, Holly. We found that the department is
taking a really long time to get back to schools. So, when I said just a
moment ago that they come up with this overarching plan and then provide
subsequent updates and, you know, reports on what they're doing--what we
found was that the Department of Education was just not responding in a
timely way to those colleges' updates. And as a result, colleges were
just left waiting, not knowing if they should proceed with their plans.
For example, in one case, the college proposed adding a new women's
sport to help make sure that women had more opportunities. And it took
OCR so long to respond that it resulted in a 10-month delay Lin
recruiting a coach. And that's not an isolated incident. We actually
found that there were multiple schools that waited more than a year to
have the Department of Education respond to their updates. And get this,
in five cases education took 5 or more years--that's right, 5 or more
years--to respond to a school. So imagine if there is a concern about
women not having equal opportunities in college sports at a school.
There's a complaint that's filed and it takes five or more years for
Education to answer the mail on that issue. That student is probably,
you know, long graduated. That's a concern. It's taking too long for the
Department of Education to respond to schools and make sure that
compliance issues are being addressed.

[Holly Hobbs:] So did OCR, did the Office of Civil Rights, tell us why
it takes so long or why they're not following up with schools sooner?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] They did. They said that they're concerned about
a lack of resources, that they don't have enough resources to do as much
as they would like to do. We acknowledge the resource issues exist.
However, we think that Education could do more. In this case, we don't
think it's acceptable for a school to have to wait 5 years to hear back
from the department on how to address a concern with compliance with
Title IX. And one of the things we found was that the staff in the
Office of Civil Rights weren't tracking due dates for responding to
colleges. Right. So something comes in and then there's no due date in a
system that says, oh, I have to respond to the college, you know, by
this time period to make sure that they get an answer in a timely way.
And that there is no tracking of dates to make sure that over time,
schools are getting responses promptly and not waiting a year, 5 years,
etc. to hear back from the department.

{MUSIC}

[Holly Hobbs:] Melissa just told us that when a complaint is received
about a Title IX issue in college sports, it could take years for that
issue to be addressed or for the college to even receive a response
about their plans to address it. So, Melissa, what more do we think the
Department of Education or Education's Office for Civil Rights should be
doing to monitor Title IX compliance?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] We think fundamentally that the department needs
to be responding in a more timely way to colleges. And the way that they
could do this is by simply recording due dates for responding to those
colleges. They can then track those to make sure that they're responding
to the colleges faster and preventing lapses of 5 years or more in
responding to colleges.

[Holly Hobbs:] And last question, what's the bottom line of this report?

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] I think the bottom line is that there are still
concerns about whether women have equal opportunities to participate in
college athletics. The numbers still show that women are participating
in college athletics less than men. Again, even though they go to
college more than men. And we think that Education's Office of Civil
Rights could respond more quickly to help ensure that colleges are
addressing problems and ensuring equal opportunities for women athletes.

[Holly Hobbs:] That was Melissa Emery-Arras talking about our new report
on college athletics. Thanks for your time, Melissa.

[Melissa Emrey-Arras:] Thank you so much, Holly.

[Holly Hobbs:] And thank you for listening to the Watchdog Report. To
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