"Consider well the proportions of things," wrote Mark Twain in Pudd'nhead Wilson.

"Proportions" are demanding attention in NCAA Division III as we fulfill the mandates of 2004 Convention Proposal No. 66 -- strategic planning and membership growth. Nearing the end of a cycle of Association-wide and divisional strategic planning, Division III delegates overwhelmingly supported the legislation calling upon our leadership to carefully study the current membership and the consequences of prospective membership growth. A final report and any recommendations resulting in legislative proposals are to be brought to the 2006 Convention.

No review could be more timely, important or natural. After all, throughout higher education, size matters. No college or university does serious planning without considering the consequences of size. There are educational possibilities that growth facilitates and there are practices made impossible by growth. Size is connected with pedagogical method, with campus culture, with alumni relations, with budgetary opportunities -- and with so many other things on our campuses. Planning for growth, managing growth or preventing growth is almost a universal element in institutional planning. For many colleges, identifying an "ideal size" is important, and they work hard to achieve and maintain it. When enrollment changes, the rate of change may be nearly as consequential as its magnitude. In some cases, growth may be so large or so fast that it transforms an institution, redirects is mission and forces it to adopt new operational principles. What college or university would not take size into account in planning for its future?

The NCAA has a history of taking size into account in Association planning. There were a variety of reasons for the adoption of the modern three-division organizational format in 1973, but among them was a sense that at more than 600 members "it was obvious" that the Association had become too large to function effectively in all respects as a single unit. Concerns about the rapid pace of growth in the 1990s led the Association to institute a moratorium on the enrollment of new members in 2000, a moratorium that only recently expired. At the individual member conference level, too, considerations of size play a substantial role in how schools agree to partner for athletics competition. Conferences intentionally limit their size (and sometimes even adopt regional subdivisions) in order to achieve some or all of the objects of reasonable schedules, minimizing lost class time, appropriate travel, management convenience and budgetary economy, to say nothing of affiliation with playing partners of similar size, character or philosophy.

Growth has been part of the experience of Division III since its organization 30 years ago. While the other, smaller divisions have sometimes experienced greater proportional growth, neither has absorbed anything like the number of new members entering Division III. In 1978-79, 25 years before the Convention that adopted Proposal No. 66, our division had 282 institutional members. This academic year, it has 422. Seven more colleges and universities are eligible to enter active membership by 2007-08. Eighteen institutions have begun the "exploratory" process that could bring them into full membership between 2008 and academic year 2010-11. By then, the division could have nearly 450 members.

In just a little over 30 years, we will have added 165 members, nearly as many as the new entrants to Divisions I and II combined. After the exploratory period ends for schools in the pipeline, Division III will account for 42 percent of all NCAA institutional members and have experienced almost half of the growth that has come to the Association since divisional organization.

Our division's growth has not been linear but has occurred in spurts. Seventy-one new members entered the division between 1995-96 and 1999-2000 alone. New members have rarely joined Division III by reclassification from other divisions. NCAA staff reports that many of our newest members were formerly part of the NAIA. Others are schools that originated as two-year campuses, sometimes as "branches" of four-year schools, but have grown into degree-granting institutions. A number are comparatively young and have just reached Division III's minimum sports-sponsorship requirement.

The growth of Division III, particularly in the last decade, and the prospect for growth in the years ahead pose important strategic questions for us. Currently, division revenues have little relationship to division size. Modest membership dues contribute only a small part of the division's income. Rather, most income derives from a fixed allocation of NCAA television revenues generated by the Division I men's basketball tournament. The distribution formula assigns 3.18 percent of Association revenues to Division III. The Presidents Council recently wrestled with one of the implications of this dependence when we took up the question of a "contingency" spending plan on the chance that something could interfere with the basketball tournament and its television coverage. Even using our budgetary reserves, our ability to spend on behalf of the division and its activities would meet only a fraction of "normal" costs. What would we do with that fraction -- allocate it to preserve core NCAA services (commitments to gender equity, student-athlete well-being, diversity, etc.) or devote most of it to sustaining Division III national championships? Although this is a remote eventuality, the underlying issue is that there is no direct relation between prospective future growth of the division with attendant expenses and division revenues.

In recent years, our division often has discussed and sometimes legislated on the length of sports playing seasons. Depending upon team success, the playing seasons for many member institutions in any given year consist of two parts, the regular season and subsequent NCAA tournament competition. As we plan for the future, we will have to ask how growth might affect the second component. Will the growing number of member institutions -- and, prospectively, new conferences -- lead us to enlarge brackets and add more postseason games in order to determine national champions? Will we move to add weeks or install more mid-week games? What are the costs? Or will we hold the line on the number of tournament participants, reducing the proportional opportunities for teams to enter postseason play?

Growth has added and will continue to add to the diversity of the division according to institutional type and mission. Taking the large view, all of us prize the diversity of American higher education, a breadth that allows us collectively to meet the needs of a wide variety of students in a wide variety of circumstances. That very same diversity makes legislating with utility and equity for all members of the division a challenge. With hundreds of members even in its early years, Division III always has included colleges and universities of different ages, histories, educational philosophies, student clienteles and characters. Growth has compounded that diversity and prospective growth promises to sustain the trend.

Since each member institution regards athletics as part of a larger educational picture and seeks a sports program that harmonizes with the character of the institution and the perceived needs of the student body, it is not surprising that we find today's diverse membership split over many key issues. If extent of sports sponsorship is one of those things that come between member institutions and conferences, the arrival of many relatively youthful new members with proportionally smaller arrays of varsity sports is likely to add another layer of complexity to management of the division. Colleges focusing resources on a small number of programs may find themselves with different outlooks and interests from those supporting large numbers of men's and women's teams.

Members recently have responded to a "Future of Division III Membership Survey" that was not designed as a ballot on size and growth but is intended to advance the conversation taken up by the Future of Division III --Phase II Oversight Group on behalf of the division leadership. The survey itself underscores the key issues: budget, championships and access, institutional diversity and philosophical consistency. Where might conversation lead us? Listen to the membership and you will hear the full range of responses to growth. They range from staying the course to new member moratoria to membership caps. They include rethinking the tripartite division of the NCAA and re-examining the suitability of three divisions to the needs of our diverse membership. Among them is the approach adopted by Division I to breadth of institutional needs and interests: the creation of appropriate subdivisions. What will be proposed and what will the membership be ready to adopt? It's too early to tell. But the exercise is worth all of our attention.

It's a matter of proportions.

Dale Knobel is president of Denison University and a member of the Division III Presidents Council.