The faculty’s role is often limited in sussing out major violations in big-time athletic departments, but new research suggests that many professors in leadership roles aren’t using some obvious tools to help protect the academic integrity of programs.
According to a national survey conducted by the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics and researchers at Penn State University, only a minority of faculty governance bodies on campuses with elite sports programs have direct oversight of athlete admissions, scholarships, and advising. And few faculty governance leaders look at the majors and courses that athletes take.
The survey also found many athletic academic-services units to be independent from the rest of campus. More than 40 percent of such units at the surveyed Football Bowl Subdivision programs do not report directly to broader academic advising departments.
Those patterns worry John S. Nichols, the coalition’s co-chair and one of the Penn State researchers. “To the extent that data on initial eligibility, special admits, scholarship termination, scholarship runoffs–problems that are academic in nature–are being done without oversight of the faculty, these festering problems are only going to get worse,” he said in an interview.
The coalition, an alliance of university faculty senates, plans to push for stricter admissions standards for athletes–an area that college presidents appear poised to tackle as well. “If you raise [Academic Progress Rates] without getting better students, there’s an increasing temptation to cut corners, which can lead to academic misconduct,” Mr. Nichols said.
The research, co-authored by Thomas F. (“T.C.”) Corrigan, appears in the current issue of the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport, along with detailed case studies of six universities’ efforts to integrate athletics and academics.
