Since 1954, no Ivy League school has provided athletic scholarships for any student-athlete. Now, the rise in student athlete compensation is forcing the conference to consider updating its archaic policy.

This past summer, the NCAA and its Power Five conferences made a landmark decision to not only provide more than $2.8 billion in damages and compensation for past and current student athletes dating back to 2016, but to implement a structure in which Power Five schools would directly pay their student athletes from a $22 million annual spending cap.

While this model is still awaiting a final settlement approval in April, the multibillion-dollar back pay would address three pending lawsuits: House v. NCAA, Hubbard v. NCAA, and Carter v. NCAA. This comes only three years after the NCAA implemented policy changes which effectively allowed student athletes to profit off their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) after a Supreme Court ruling rejecting an appeal of its antitrust lawsuit, NCAA v. Alston.

"Forty years ago, [the Supreme Court] agreed with [the NCAA] that amateurism is a social good and it should be allowed to protect amateurism through regulations that deny compensation to athletes," said Jodi Balsam, a professor of sports law at Brooklyn Law School. "Over the last 40 years, [the NCAA] commercialized college athletics to such an extent that the concept of amateurism has become so diluted, it's no longer a basis for granting the NCAA any kind of immunity to antitrust challenge."

With this rule change came NIL collectives, independent groups that manage the money received from boosters -- referred to as "Associated Entity or Individual" in the amended settlement -- of a specific school to provide NIL opportunities for those student-athletes. The collectives have shifted the NIL landscape drastically due to the enormous amount of money that can be garnered and distributed along with the lack of a salary cap on how much money these student athletes can receive. These groups have made it possible for athletes such as the University of Tennessee's Nico Iamaleava to be paid over $8 million in an NIL agreement before even touching the field.

Not every Division I student-athlete has reaped these benefits. In the Ivy League, not a single school has an NIL collective, making it one of three Division I conferences lacking this modern amenity.

After a memorable two seasons for Ivy League men's basketball -- with the Princeton Tigers' Sweet Sixteen run and the Yale Bulldogs upsetting the Auburn Tigers -- this past offseason saw the exit of most of the best talent in the conference: Ivy League Rookie of the Year Malik Mack, First Team All-Ivy member Danny Wolf, Tyler Perkins, Chisom Okpara, and Kalu Anya. These Ivy League standouts joined a staggering number of transfers that amounted to more than 10 percent of Division I basketball. While transferring from the Ivy League is common for a postgraduate year, due to the Ancient Eight's policy against student athletes' competing after undergrad, all five of these players transferred after at most two seasons.

"You can't really tell an 18-, 19-year-old kid to pass up on $200,000 or $300,000. That's money that they may not be able to see in their life," said Columbia basketball alum Zavian McLean. "With the other alternative being pay to continue doing what you're doing, it's just not the same thing." Additionally, McLean notes, some of these players transferred to "other prestigious institutions right outside of the Ivy League" to receive better compensation opportunities.

Last year, two Brown basketball alums -- Grace Kirk and Tamenang Choh -- filed a federal lawsuit against the Ivy League calling for student athletes to receive athletic scholarships as a form of payment around the same time the Dartmouth men's basketball team attempted to unionize. Both cases failed to change the policy, although Kirk and Choh plan to appeal the dismissal decision from the District Court of Connecticut.

But with the talent that has fled the Ivy League and the amount of NIL money continuing to increase, Louisiana State University running back and Columbia football alum Tyson Edwards feels as though athletic scholarships are a sensible first step. "Trying to be a student athlete within the harsh academics that the Ivy League comes with -- but then also having a schedule and everything that comes with being an athlete at the same time -- makes it very hard," Edwards said. "You're not getting paid. NIL is very small. And support, compared to most places, very little. So it's definitely hard to stay motivated."