Description
The Big Ten Conference (B1G) is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the United States. Founded as the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives in 1896, it predates the founding of its regulating organization, the NCAA. It is based in the Chicago area in Rosemont, Illinois. For many decades the conference consisted of 10 prominent universities, which accounts for its name. As of 2014, it consists of 14 member institutions and 2 affiliate institutions, with 4 new member institutions scheduled to join in 2024. The conference competes in the NCAA Division I and its football teams compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), formerly known as Division I-A, the highest level of NCAA competition in that sport.
Big Ten member institutions are major research universities with large financial endowments and strong academic reputations. A large student body is a hallmark of its universities, as 12 of the 14 members enroll more than 30,000 students. They are all public universities except founding member Northwestern University as the lone private university, but will be joined by private University of Southern California at the beginning of the 2024–25 collegiate athletic year. Collectively, Big Ten universities educate more than 520,000 total students and have 5.7 million living alumni. The members engage in $9.3 billion in funded research each year; 13 out of 14 are members of the Association of American Universities and all are members of the Universities Research Association (URA). All Big Ten universities are also members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, formerly the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.
Though the Big Ten existed for nearly a century based in the Midwest, since 2014 the conference's geographic footprint stretches from the Mid-Atlantic to the Great Plains and in 2024 will also be on the West Coast.
