Thursday is the 50th anniversary of Title IX being signed into law.  To mark the occasion, USA Today conducted an investigative series around the landmark legislation banning sexual discrimination in education; and the report found many colleges and universities are still falling short when it comes to equity for female student athletes.  Rachel Axon, reporter at USA TODAY, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Closing Bell

Investigative Series Finds Many Colleges & Universities Still Fall Short Of Title IX 50 Years After Passage of Law

Well, tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of Title nine being signed into law. And to mark the occasion in our business sports segment. A USA today conducted an investigative series around the landmark legislation banning sexual discrimination and education. It did find many colleges and universities are still falling short when it comes to equity for female student athletes. And joining me now is one of the report's authors, Rachel Axon reporter at USA Today, Rachel thanks so much for coming on. So what did this series find in regard to how women are still struggling for equity at many of our nation's top schools? Well, we looked at mainly football bowl subdivision schools and found various ways that they are being short changed both an opportunity. Uh, schools can provide opportunities for women proportional to their enrollment. We found 87% of the schools are not doing that. Um, short changing women to the tune of more than 11,000 opportunities? Uh, they're also manipulating their numbers to make it look like they're giving women more opportunities than they actually are. We found that they created Roughly 3600 opportunities for women Without actually even adding a new team. And then in treatment categories, once those women get on campus, we compared comparable teams. So there's men's basketball, women's basketball and found for every dollar that school spent on those men's teams spent 71 cents on the women's team interesting. I know obviously you looked at a lot of data Rachel. Did you talk to any female athletes in particular? You don't need to name them by name per se. But what did they have to say about their own experiences at these universities? Sure. Well we did talk to them and some of them are named in the story. I don't think they would find it. But um you know, we found some experiences that really show the effects of this. You know, one of the roster manipulation tactics we found is just padding rowing roster stuffing them full of more athletes that are needed. And typically how that looks at schools will have an open tryout, They'll try to have as many people on the roster in the fall season when they're being counted. And then those novice athletes aren't getting the same experience uh that the rowers are who are competing in those those boats are getting um the the the effect of this when you pad and you don't actually add new teams is there may be teams that want to be added that want to have an opportunity. And so we talked to lacrosse players at florida state for example who they only have a club team, they've asked to be promoted to varsity. That's a sport that florida State sponsors, its conference sponsors that they don't have and they can't get an opportunity to compete at the D one level because the school is uh you know doing things like manipulating its numbers. So another thing that I'm reading here that the report finds is that misconceptions? Do persist about how title nine is enforced? and what protections it actually affords two women. What are some of these misconceptions? And What is it the root of the confusion? I mean, 50 years later, I think what we're looking at now, you know, this is certainly front of mind uh in 1972 in the past and in the ensuing decades, but uh, there's a lot of opportunity that didn't exist 50 years ago that uh, people are kind of used to, there's polling that shows that students and parents largely don't know about the law. Um, but it does offer all of these protections that uh, they would have the opportunity to file a complaint with the Department of Education if they felt like they were being discriminated on the basis effect in any number of key areas we're talking about athletics, but Channel Nine covers quite a bit more than that. Um They can also file a federal lawsuit and that there have been many um, female athletes who have had success doing it that way. So, You know, we are 50 years in but still a majority of people don't understand the protections that this law provides. And um, it is my understanding that Title Nine was actually introduced in hopes of getting more women into graduate schools. There's the athletic component as well, most commonly, I think at least these days, Title Nine Associated with Athletics because of its impact on women's sports in particular, but what did the report that you and your colleagues at USA today conducted find about the lack of equity afforded to women students, college students outside of athletics are so are reporting right now has focused mainly on athletics, but Title Nine offers protections outside of it, Right? This would be pregnant students that would offer them protection um under the biden administration. They have said L. G. B. T. Q plus students. Uh, this offers protection. Uh, we have further reporting coming on the ways this calls for schools to address sexual harassment, um, or sexual assault on their campuses. So this offers a broad variety of protections for people, not just on college campuses. That's where we focus. But this applies to any schools that are receiving federal funds, public private kindergarten up through graduate school. I'm just curious to, and this may be kind of, you know, the next perhaps the next conversation to have Rachel, but there's been so much made about N. I. L. Right? So these college students, college athletes can now make money in a way that they couldn't make in the past based on their name, image and likeness or N. I. L. For sure. The fact that equity based on your report isn't actually equal, right? There isn't actually equity for women and a lot of these colleges and universities, any insight as to how that might impact their own ability then to market themselves and make money on any sort of N. I. L. Deal, I think we've seen, you know, if you look at the fights that are happening in women's sports and thinking of the U. S. Women's national team um for example uh getting the market to understand the value of women and female athletes can be challenging at times I think were these I guess run parallel, You know, Title nine is telling the school that in your treatment in your opportunities um in your awarding of scholarship dollars, you know, these should be equitable. That's what you should be striving for. NHL you know, works more commercially and to the extent that schools are involved in that you know, they would still be obliged by Title Nine. But um the market needs to understand the value of those. I think there's been some female athletes um uh you know that have particularly engaged social media followings that have opportunities out there to uh to make money off their name, image in business. Okay. Rachel Axon reporter at UsA Today, Rachel thanks so much for coming on and sharing more about your report. Very interesting investigative series and we appreciate it