UHart board backs plan to drop Division I athletics

Photo | The University of Hartford The University of Hartford campus.

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By Sean Teehan

The University of Hartford's board of regents Thursday voted to drop UHart's athletic program from NCAA Division I to Division III.

After the vote, UHart Board of Regents Chair David Gordon said dropping to Division III would enable the university to strengthen its academic programs.

"While we know this decision will disappoint some members of our community, we remain confident that this shift is in the best long-term interests of the institution and all its students,” Gordon said.

The vote came a few weeks after a feasibility study said the move would save UHart nearly $10 million per year, and that the school currently loses about $13 million annually on its athletic program, which is part of the NCAA's Division I America East Conference. If the program was in the lower-profile Division III, the school would lose only about $3.8 million annually, the report said.

In the report, CarrSports Consulting LLC, the Florida-based firm UHart commissioned to complete the assessment, said UHart's Division I athletics program “cannot achieve the goal of becoming more self-sustaining.”

However, some critics have raised questions about some of the data in the report.

UHart lists seven men's and eight women's sports teams currently operating at the varsity level. The timing of the decision was made more difficult after the Hartford Hawks men's basketball team made its first appearance earlier this year in the NCAA Division I "March Madness" tournament.

The move also comes as the university faces financial challenges stemming from the pandemic. UHart last year enacted voluntary pay cuts and furloughs, while temporarily eliminating retirement contributions to recover some of at least $10 million in refunds and other revenue losses the school experienced amid COVID-19 shutdown measures at the time.