The athletics scholarships that many parents and high-school athletes perceive as hard-won tickets to a college education actually amount to only a fraction of the total college cost, The New York Times reports.

In a three-part series titled “The Scholarship Divide,” which concludes today, the Times reports that parents’ and athletes’ expectations for winning coveted athletics scholarships are frequently at odds with the financial realities of college sports, in which few scholarships cover anything close to the total amount of tuition and other expenses.

The Times cites data, provided by the NCAA, showing the average athletics scholarship to be $10,409, with awards in some sports, like baseball and track and field, dipping as low as $2,000.

Most scholarship athletes, far from living the high life, keep grueling schedules in exchange for their sometimes paltry awards, the series reports.

As coaches attempt to convince recruits’ parents that, indeed, the long-awaited scholarship is truly only a quarter of the overall cost, the varying amounts of scholarship money distributed to players can fuel dissension among teammates. —Libby Sander