Comments on A Bracket You Won't See Elsewhere

• graduation rates
• Posted by Jerry Pattengale , AVP for Scholarship and Grants at IWU on March 14, 2006 at 6:25am EST

• An interesting article--clever approach. My only caution is that these rates are considerably higher than average graduation rates nationwide. Four year rates range from 26% to 32%, depending on whether it's a two or four-year insitution. Five and six year rates are 10 points higher. Even the cohorts that are listed as 30 points behind others still seem to be benefiting from this extra currricular involvement. Appreciated your creative and helpful article--and I concur that more should be graduating. JP

• Posted by Don , Professor at Major research university on March 14, 2006 at 9:25am EST

• Jerry -- the six-year rates you report are a bit low, at least for students who start with the intent on getting a bachelor's degree. Here's a quote from another publication about an ED study released yesterday: "Some 35 percent of first-time, full-time college students who plan to earn a bachelor's degree reach their goal within four years, and 56 percent achieve it within six years."

  And let's keep in mind that besides the extra curricular involvement you mentioned, scholarship athletes receive another important benefit -- they don't have to pay for their education. We know that financial pressures cause a good proportion of students to stop or drop out, so having college paid for is an advantage for scholarship athletes.

• Another overlooked benefit for athletes in big time progams
• Posted by RAH on March 14, 2006 at 10:00am EST

• Athletes in the major Division I programs have another benefit not afforded the vast majority of students: extensive personal tutoring throughout college and breaks given by faculty when their academic performance fall short of even the most minimum standards. Given all the help these athletes get, it's astounnding that their graduation rates aren't much higher.

• Oh So True
• Posted by Raconteur-Type Grad Student , Lecturer and Lead Curmudgeon at Big Ol' Public "Ivy" Research University on March 14, 2006 at 11:45am EST

• Great stuff here, Inside Higher Ed! Of course, it would be too cliche to comment on the commercialization of collegiate sports (about six decades too late!), but what the hell is the point of college anyway? Edification? Getting drunk four nights a week? Learning about Walter Benjamin? (that best describes my undergrad alma mater :) or what? Clark Kerr pointed us in the right direction, and of course, Old Man R.M. Hutchins said it best when he noted (with apologies to Plato): "What is honored in a culture will be cultivated there"...hmm, something to think about, methinks!

• Posted by Marvinlee on March 14, 2006 at 1:35pm EST

• Unethical leadership pressure on professors and instructors to grant favorable grades to athletes should receive far more scholarly examination than it now does. Detailed research investigation, national comparisons, books, articles, speeches, and intellectual attention should all be focused on the many issues that apply to the grading malpractices surrounding college athletes.

  I suspect, entirely without a formal national database of proof, that professors who honestly grade, and sometimes fail, popular athletes, suffer in their chances for such things as promotions, tenure, favorable committee assignments, etc.

• Ever tutored these athletes?
• Posted by R.A. Shaw on March 16, 2006 at 6:50am EST

• They were from the inner-city. Not academically strong.

  One (defensive end) had been sexually-abused as a child by an uncle and cried about it, during a one-on-one tutoring session. Others saw friends fatally gunned down. Pretty grim stuff.

  All tried like heck to make grades. Why?

  How'd you like to live where they came from? Need a PhD to figure that out?

  No one got a free pass. Everyone just tried their best. That's all that mattered. And so it goes.

• Ray Bucknell
• Posted by Bucky , Mascot at Bucknell University on March 17, 2006 at 11:05am EST

• 'Ray Bucknell, 'ray Bucknell, 'ray for the orange and the blue! 'Ray, 'ray, 'ray, 'ray, 'ray for the orange and the blue!

• March Madness will go on as it always has ... unless
• Posted by Frank G. Splitt , Member at The Drake Group on March 23, 2006 at 4:25am EST

• You can ask Americans about big-time college sports and they will be willing to tell you three things: first, it’s great entertainment; second, they know most schools cheat; and third, they don't want to be bothered with the details of related issues and reform efforts -- especially during the NCAA's March Madness. Who cares about teams that don't measure up academically? -- certainly not the NCAA, even though it says it wants to penalize schools that don't.

  Under the NCAA's highly touted Academic Progress Rate (APR) formula, one point is deducted from its maximum APR point count of 1000 for each team player who is failing, does not stay in school or leaves school early in bad academic standing. Any team falling below the NCAA's minimum APR standard of 925 would suffer loss of scholarships, even ineligibility for post-season competition. However, the NCAA allows waivers for anomalies, appeals, and whatever it takes to allow academically unqualified schools with competitive teams to remain eligible for the tournament. If the NCAA enforced its academic standard for post-season competition this year, there would not be a Sweet 16; only five of the 16 teams scored above the NCAA's standard of 925.

  In "A Bracket You Won’t See Elsewhere" [InsideHigherEd.com, March 14, 2006, http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/14/tournament], David Epstein calls our attention to a Center for American Progress campaign that is aimed at underscoring the academic failures of many big-time teams and pressuring the corporations that pour money into big-time programs to direct some of the money to recognize teams that perform well academically, http://thinkprogress.org/march-madness/.

  Could all of this signal the end of March Madness as we know it, the end of college and university conferences serving as the NBA's minor leagues with athletes pretending to be students? It should, but it doesn't.

  The NCAA’s largest money maker will go on without a hitch. For the schools, this means providing near professional level teams of athletes by beefing up their eligibility centers, aka Athletics Advisory and/or Support Centers, and putting more pressure upon faculty to pass poor (or worse) students, raise grades and otherwise compromise their academic integrity by fashioning courses and degree tracts for the sole purpose of meeting eligibility and graduation-rate requirements for their athletes.

  The NCAA will likely do its part by continuing to let the schools operate on an "honor" system (grading themselves without independent oversight), granting exceptions and waivers, showing that their flawed system is "working" by penalizing weak schools, and leveling infraction penalties so minor that it would be well worth the risk of being caught cheating, as well as by employing an enforcement staff that is not matched to the monumental task of monitoring schools that appear willing to do almost anything to build a winning team.

  If the NCAA is really looking to get schools to measure up academically, it could ask each member school to provide aggregated (Buckley-compliant) academic data so it could assess whether or not their athletes are legitimate students in good standing. A cohort of a school's basketball team consisting of the top 50% of the athletes with the most playing time would suffice. As for the data, the NCAA could request aggregated attendance records and the names of the faculty (along with the title of their courses, the athlete's grades, and the course GPA) who are providing university-level courses for many academically unprepared athletes who have a full-time, basketball-playing job, miss numerous classes, and come dead tired to others.

  You can bet that this won't happen. As syndicated sports columnist Bob Gilbert has said: "The NCAA pro-academic story is what it is: A big lie."

  Simply put, the NCAA has no incentive to change and neither do the schools -- the money is so good and the ways to game the system are so many.

  March Madness will go on as it always has ... unless the proliferation of phony 'student-athletes' prompts congressional scrutiny along with a credible threat to remove the tax-exempt status of the entire college sports entertainment business.

• Posted by Mike Jones , TX beats Penn? on March 23, 2006 at 9:45am EST

• You mean to tell me that Texas graduates a higher percentage of basketball players than Penn? No way...