Hear, hear! I went to grad/law/biz school at Northeastern, a middle-of-the-road university in Boston that has decided to abandon its founding mission of educating the poor and working class in favor of becoming a Wealthy and Prestigious National University in USNWR (much as BU and BC have in past decades). Their naked ambition in this regard has been nauseating, particularly since my resource-poor grad program was perpetually overlooked so they could build shiny luxury dorms and gyms and other such academic necessities. Naturally, the university that started in the Huntington Street YMCA now costs within a few hundred dollars of Harvard or Williams, but without the generous financial aid policies.

Much as you relate to your own alma mater’s practices, Northeastern has gone from ~65% acceptance six or seven years ago to about 33% acceptance today, almost entirely by sending thousands of glossy brochures and application fee waivers and letters of encouragement to high school students who don’t have the chops to get in. These students, of course, are rejected out of hand, and the acceptance rate plummets. Simultaneously, the school reduced its freshman class size.* It is a staggeringly dishonest practice, but it has results: Northeastern went from being an unranked regional university in 2004 up to 69th place in the last USNWR rankings – a jump of more than 80 places. Tellingly, the director of admissions now earns more than President Obama, and the newish president’s salary has increased by more than $300,000 over the last few years, according to the school’s IRS Form 990 submissions for the last few years. The university as corporation, indeed.

The grand irony, of course, is that no matter what Northeastern does to affect their rank, employers will always consider Harvard > BC > BU > Northeastern in their hiring practices, regardless of what the rankings state.

*Another factor are the school’s moves to phase out its traditional schedule, wherein students take five years to graduate because of lengthy co-ops. This will be achieved by reducing the amount of time spent on co-op. Of course, students don’t pay tuition when on co-op, and the university can turn over more students with a four-year program than a five-year program. Hmmm…

I agree with the posting, and this reply. My comment is tangential; I went to grad school at Boston (but not to any of the 4 schools listed). I agree that Harvard’d be at the top and Northeastern at the bottom, but I’d thought it’d be BU > BC instead of vice-versa. But, I didn’t do a close comparison … also this was many years ago, a few years B.F. (Before Flutie).

If corporations would stop outsourcing jobs to third world countries students would not be pressured into attending colleges when they clearly do not have the ability to pass. Bring jobs home, increase the selectivity of all universities, and close all diploma mills. When many of our college graduates can not read, write or communicate well, they are no bargain for potential employers. Universities were once private country clubs for the intellectually elite. Trying to teach toads on a log is a waste of time for everybody. There are good paying jobs that require skills, not education. America seems to have forgotten that.

I especially like the concluding comment: “may of them would have made those contributions even without the amazing educational opportunities they were provided…..” I had a student who flunked one of my easier courses. He never should have enrolled in college. But, he had an innate talent for engineering, invented a clever umbrella, opened his own factory and dropped out of college. Not unlike Bill Gates and others. Conversely, the majority of my students who actually graduate should not be released into corporate employment due to their profound lack of intellect and ambition.

Thank you, Pat McGuire for raising the flag for “non-traditional” students. In that population, let’s consider the situation of 20,000 students who age out of foster care in the US each year, only 3% of whom ever achieve a bachelor’s degree! This is an extremely marginalized population whose members come from some of the most discouraging childhood environments. We need to identify the colleges that help these few students to navigate through college to graduation and celebrate their awesome achievement in completing that journey.

Redshirting freshman year may increase the sports programs cost but it may not be all bad for typical freshman athletes…if the extra year upgrades their learning skills, and perhaps puts them on notice that, yes, grades are serious.

I don’t like the idea of increasing the GPA requirement from 2.0 to 2.3, because it seems to me that if 2.0 is passing for regular students, it’s only fair that it should apply to all.  Maybe the NCAA has some research to backup the requirement for a 2.3 though.

The extra year may be bad for students who would be eligible for pro draft early, since it will take them an extra year to get the game experience and public notice they may need.  A year delay may also expose them to a greater, longer risk of career-ending injuries.

I wonder how this affects the balance between the NCAA and the NJCAA.  Maybe more student athletes would seek NJCAA schools instead of having to redshirt freshman year in NCAA. 

Bart Schuster
OnlineGraduateSchool.tripod.com
Twitter.com/arrive2_net

If these incoming athletes can not read and write, what were those in K-12 doing?

As many of the very expensive and very good athletic support programs demonstrate, these students are nor dumb. They have just been denied an education.

Simply publishing the remedial courses that athlete and non-athlete students from various school systems must take would, at least, tell parents and taxpayers something. Actually billing them for this remedial work would be even better.  

Firstly, most universities are changing their admissions policies by evaluating the academic rigor high schools and not looking at ACT or SAT test scores as much for good reason.  These high-stakes tests are merely predictors of success, but do not determine success.  Like any other high-stakes test, it only measures a student’s ability in one exam, greatly reducing the reliability of the test scores.  Additionally, these scores pose multiple validity issues, not with the content, but with the “issues” students bring into the testing environment.  Relying solely on these scores does not paint a clear picture of a student’s academic ability, rather how well they can perform on one test on one day.  Looking at the high school GPA allows a review of academic success over a period of time, including different modalities of learning, which ultimately shows the persistence and success of our diverse learners. Therefore, this system is actually in favor of our students, allowing them to demonstrate varying abilities.  This generally perpetuates success, which is what educators should want.
 
Although the statistics provided hold a negative connotation towards student-athletes, this subgroup generally holds a higher GPA than a “normal” student. However, I do agree that student-athletes need to be held to a high standard and raising the minimum GPA requirements will make them put more efforts into their career path, rather than focusing on sports alone.
 
 
I truly have a problem with this statement:
“The bottom line is, the lower you go in test scores, the worse students are in basic reading skills,” says Gurney. “Is it the role of four-year institutions to teach students how to read?”
 
It is the responsibility of 4-year universities, or any post-secondary institution, to implement reading strategies into content areas.  Sustained-silent reading, or independent reading, is only effective if the student’s are comprehending 99% of the material.  That is, they could answer varying levels of comprehension questions and get 99% correct.  However, professors require students to read large sums of their textbook independently prior to coming into class, don’t necessarily discuss the material, assess the material directly from the textbook, and expect students to understand it.  This is seriously unfair, especially students with learning disabilities.  Good professors incorporate reading strategies, like active reading, into their lectures (even though I strongly disagree with pure lectures as well). They teach vocabulary, active prior knowledge, and differentiate instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners.  Good teachers understand how to teach reading and writing skills in conjunction and understand that good readers have the ability to be good writers and vice versa. So, the real issue is, is that professors should go through education courses to understand how to deliver material and teach it to students because at the end of the day, every teacher is a reading teacher, regardless of the discipline. These strategies MUST be taught because as students progress through education, the material becomes increasingly difficult and the learning gap widens.  We must meet the needs of our diverse populations and that means teaching reading strategies, including study strategies, that will be most beneficial for specific content areas.
 
 “When you’re having to deal face-face with these athletes who have such severe difficulties—they can’t write, they can’t read—yet they have to get eligible, it’s the only thing they care about, that’s their ticket to future,” he says. “They’re so pressured, they have to cheat. Or fail.”
 
Good teaching ,coupled with valid and reliable assessments, prevent cheating and failing. So maybe the problem does not lie within the student-athletes; after all, they are simply using the strategies they know. The larger problems lies within the inability (not all professors of course) to differentiate instruction and incorporate important reading strategies into his/her lessons.  Professional development and effective evaluation systems need to be put into place so that we can encourage student success and properly evaluate student performance.

I suppose a redshirting freshman is off the hook on game performance.  I guess I’m just concerned because, in my experience, the students who took advantage of redshirting were anything but focused on academics.  Those of us who were focused on academics didn’t want or need a redshirt year for academic reasons.  And because, when it gets right down to it, redshirting doesn’t reduce your time commitments to the team substantially.  It might reduce the pressure some, which in theory would make it easier to succeed in the classroom.  I just don’t see that reduction in pressure having a whole lot of impact on classroom performance.

There was also a stigma associated with redshirting when I was playing.  The folks who redshirted were doing so either because they weren’t good enough to play their first year, or because they were too fragile and got hurt.  There was definite resentment from the rest of us because they were “free-loading” – they got an extra scholarship year, when the rest of us got kicked out after 4 years.  An academic redshirt year, in some ways, actually ends up punishing the academically prepared athletes/rewarding the unprepared.