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Colleges'
Record Mixed When It Comes to Graduation Rates Among Basketball
Players |
Posted:
04.02.07
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Despite excelling on the court, student athletes on many of the
best college basketball teams in the nation have an alarmingly
low graduation rate, according to a new study. The top ranked
team in the country, Ohio State, has been graduating only 38 percent
of its players. And some schools, like the University of Tennessee,
have graduated less than 20 percent.
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 A
study released by the University of Central Florida in March also
found only 24 of the 65 schools in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball
Tournament graduated more than 70 percent of their players. The
research also highlighted a large racial disparity in the graduation
rates, with more than three-quarters of white student athletes
earning degrees and only half the black students doing so.
Richard Lapchick, the study's author and director of UCF's Institute
of Diversity and Ethics in Sports, said in the study that while
graduation rates have gone up in recent years, "the lingering
bad news is the continuing disparity in the academic success between
African-American and white men's basketball student-athletes."
Some leaders in higher education say these numbers are particularly
troubling, given the millions of dollars some schools earn from
their basketball programs.
The NCAA recently initiated measures to better track graduation
rates and hold schools accountable for their players' academic
success. So far, the changes have met with mixed reviews.
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Measuring
success |
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The disturbing findings come despite recent changes in the way
colleges measure athlete success. Prior to 2006, college athletic
programs counted players who left school to enter the National
Basketball Association's draft as non-graduates. The new measure,
called the Graduation Success Rate, excludes these players from
the teams' rating as long as they were in good academic standing
when leaving school.
 As
could be expected, GSRs for teams competing in this year's tournament
are generally higher than teams' graduation rates under the old
system. The gap in graduation rates between white and black athletes,
however, remains significant.
To measure student athletes' progress toward degrees, the NCAA
also imposed a second measure, the Academic Progress Rate. Starting
next season, all teams with players who fail to complete a required
number of classes toward a degree will be subject to penalties,
such as the loss of scholarships.
Many top ranked college basketball programs depend on these scholarships
to recruit the best high school players and field strong teams.
As Lapchick told the NewsHour on March 30, "scholarships
are [teams'] bread and butter. ... How they stay in contention
to get in the tournament."
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Getting a
quality education |
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Critics of the NCAA's new measures say they don't go far enough
or insure that student athletes are getting a quality education,
despite the millions of dollars that some schools make off their
basketball programs.
 Richard
Southall, associate professor of Sport and Leisure Management
at the University of Memphis, says that teams often recruit students
who are under-prepared for college-level academics, then force
them to miss classes for games and devote huge amounts of time
to training and practice.
"We're setting the kids up for failure, and then we blame
them," Southall said. "That, to me, is the height of
exploitation."
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An optimistic
trend |
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Some leaders in higher education, however, see rising graduation
rates and the NCAA's commitment to tracking academic progress
as a good sign.
 Britt
Kirwan, current Chancellor of the University of Maryland and a
member of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics,
a nonprofit organization that seeks to improve academic values
in college sports, is optimistic about the NCAA's new guidelines.
"I would concur that graduation rates don't necessarily
measure what students are learning, but that doesn't mean that
this measure is not a good one to have," he said.
Kirwan believes that holding schools accountable for their players'
progress toward degrees will force athletic programs to start
addressing a long-standing problem.
In the next couple of months, the NCAA could announce that a
few schools with top athletic programs will be penalized under
the new guidelines.
"When some high-profile teams start losing scholarships,
you're going to see some pushback," Kirwan said. "I
think it's going to be very important that the NCAA and the governing
bodies of the NCAA stand up to this pressure."
If these reforms prove effective, Kirwan hopes they will be a
foundation for putting the "college" back into college
basketball.
--By
Noah Buhayar, NewsHour Extra
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