Rice officials acknowledged Tuesday that the university will begin to cover cost of attendance for its student athletes, beginning with the 2015-2016 school year.

The changes comes in the wake of an NCAA rule change that allows Division I schools to add incidental costs to the value of grant-in-aid athletic scholarships. The five power conferences – ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac 12 – voted for the changes but other Division I schools in smaller conferences like Rice (C-USA) and UH (AAC) are also allowed, but not required, to cover athlete's cost of attendance.

Rice, a private university, would not release the amount they will pay athletes for the cost of attendance.

"We're committed to providing cost of attendance and will be phasing it in over time, starting this year," the school said in a statement released to the Chronicle. "Per university policy, Rice does not comment on specific budgetary details."

Estimated cost of attendance to Rice, per its financial aid office is totaled at $58,283, with $41,560 toward tuition, $723 for fees, $13,650 for room and board, $800 for books and $1,550 for personal expenses.

Rice University president David Leebron, a member of the NCAA Division I board of directors, said last August that he hoped benefits would eventually come to student-athletes.

He said board members agree "enabling conferences with more resources to apply them to the benefit of student-athletes is the thing to do."

"It's not exactly what you would come up with if you started from scratch, but you never start completely from scratch," Leebron said. "Overall, it's an excellent proposal that has received, as far as I know, broad-based acceptance. It's a good set of compromises that creates more flexibility in the system."

Rice isn't the only Conference-USA institution that will give its student-athletes more money. University of Texas at San Antonio, a fellow C-USA member, will be offering $2,506 per year, the San Anton Express-News reported.

The University of Houston will add $3,950 to athletes who live on-campus and $5,500 for those who live off-campus to full athletic scholarships. Division I athletes will receive nearly $160 million a year in new benefits, a USA Today analysis showed.

"One thing we will pay close attention to is that this doesn't lead to a (reduction) in the number of sports or the number of opportunities to women on our campuses," Leebron said in August 2014. "A lot of us are of the general belief that we need to find ways to restrain the increased cost of athletics, but that constraint shouldn't rest overwhelmingly on the athletes."