In 2011/2012 academic year, the UConn athletic department had approx $10.75 million budgeted for athletic scholarships.
I think to solve all the problems, it would be pretty simple actually, and I already wrote about it. Make all that money, on a yearly basis, liquid, cash equivalent available to the students. The unfortunate thing, is that most institutions, wouldn't be able to do it, because they don't have enough cash flow to do it. I wouldn't go as far as I wrote before, about making student's responsible for actually paying the bills, and cashing out the funds, but I would definitely want to see the clear paper trail. The athletic scholarship budget is X amount ($10.75 mill in 2011/2012 for UConn)
Open Johnny B. Goode's athletic scholarship file, and right there, deposit Johnny's share of that $10.75 mill) (approx $125k deposited into X account on Y date for the academic year), and just like anybody's bank statements, ...... Z amount coming out on this day for tuition expenses. A, B, C amounts coming out for books/room and board fees, student fees, etc. etc....on so/so date.
To my knowledge, this is not how scholarship funding is accounted for in university settings. THat $10.75 mill, in UConn's case, to my knowledge(which may be totally wrong) is basically treated as a line item that is transfered and manipulated around in budgets and accounting, but is not liquid to actual cash asset.
IF schools were to do it thithe way I describe, it would be easy to work a stipend into it, and retain amateur status as much as it is now in theory, it would simply be another line item, in the amount of money that initially got deposited in each player's spending account, each year.
Unless an athletic department, and a university in general, is really sucking wind with management, finances, academic grants and funding, tuition, admissions, and athletic department revenue, you're not going to know if the university is really hurting financially......because it's all just accounting gymnastics anyway - and how the higher ups decide they want things to look for the agencies that they need to report financial things like that to, within the rules for reporting.