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[philnotfil]

Re: "Athletes Question Effectiveness of NCAA Rule"

Has the NCAA looked at the overall student population to see if this 40-60-80 rule is reasonable?  Granted, it makes sense that if you want to graduate in 5 years you should complete 20% a year, but I didn't know very many people who actually did that.  It seems like there were an awful lot of people that played around for two or three years, finally figured out what they wanted to do and then hit the books. 

I'm a little biased about this because by the time I figured out what I wanted to do, the university just wanted to get me out the door, and the academic advisors kept pushing me to change my major to something I could graduate quickly in, rather than what I was interested in.


Anyway, I don't think that we should hold the athletes to a higher academic standard than the rest of the students.  ( I also don't think we should let them get away with lower standards either, treat them like, you know, college students)

[zharkov]

Has the NCAA looked at the overall student population to see if this 40-60-80 rule is reasonable?  Granted, it makes sense that if you want to graduate in 5 years you should complete 20% a year, but I didn't know very many people who actually did that.  ....

A BA is a 4 year degree and students should be completing 25% a year; saying that it is OK to take 5 years and explicitly allowing (encouraging?) students to complete 20% of a BA per year is already lowering standards.

It is OK not to know what you want to do with the rest of your life when you are 20.  If something catches your interest when you are a junior or senior, and can't change your major, then go to grad school.

[he_famktg]

This truly saddens me. I think academics should be stressed in some way over athletics; but this rule is not helping when an advisor does just the opposite (stresses athletics over academics) by suggesting someone switch majors to something "easy" instead of what they feel is their life's calling.

"After consulting with his Kent State adviser, he decided to major in communication studies, which allows more electives and accepted 81 of his hours — plenty to qualify him for his sport.

He still wants to become a phys-ed teacher, but without a teacher's certification he knows his options will be limited. "It's too bad," he says. "I found something I was good at, and now I can't go into it."

College athletics is temporary for most (a few years); but your career is something you need to be happy in for a long time! My advise - major in what you need to have a life-long career you will enjoy.

This rule is supposed to stress the importance of academics, but it is obviously having the opposite effect when students have to choose "the game" over their academic/career choice. That's sad.

[philnotfil]

A BA is a 4 year degree and students should be completing 25% a year; saying that it is OK to take 5 years and explicitly allowing (encouraging?) students to complete 20% of a BA per year is already lowering standards.

We say that it is a four year degree, but only 33% of students actually do that.  The six year graduation rate is only 55%  (http://www.institutiondata.com/ng3.cfm). 

[tolerantly]

Those numbers don't look right to me.  No info on the site about who "institutiondata" is, either, and it looks kind of geocities.  I don't trust the data compilation, would need verification.

I do think it's getting less realistic, though, to expect 4-year graduation, esp. at public institutions.  It seems to me that that, like so much else in academia, is predicated on the idea of an 18-yo unmarried childless freshman and cheap tuition or parental help.  This is just not how it works for increasing numbers of students.  My nanny's a hardworking kid, but she's putting herself through school, and she's trying to save money by taking care of general reqs at a cc.  Between working and trying to sync classes with university requirements, she's not likely to make it through in four years.  5 or 6 is much more likely, and she'll still carry debt.  If she had kids of her own, well, it'd likely be a longer haul. 

Actually, re students with kids, what I see is that in order to keep scholarships and other fin aid, students are having to take unrealistic courseloads.  Which means they do the absolute minimum to get by.  Actual education, well, not so much.

I think back to the city night schools, and think perhaps this is the model more universities need to look at as the demographics shift.  If all a student can realistically do is one class a semester, then by God, let her do it and call her a part-time student, with all the rights & benefits.  I understand that this makes tracking messy, but there are certain realities abroad in the land.

[philnotfil]

The numbers were done by Nate Johnson, who was the Director of Institutional Research for the State University System of Florida.  All the data came from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Graduation Rate Survey done by the US DoE.  I couldn't find the simple numbers on the DoE or NCES websites (you can go through one institution at a time on the NCES site, but I'm not that bored).  I do agree that those numbers are disturbing.

[gesualdo]

I agree - hardly anyone is even mature enough to know what they want to do with the rest of their life (or the next 10 years for that matter) when they're 20.  I have met very few people who really matured before age 24 or 25.  Heck, I didn't figure out what I wanted to do until I was 27.  I essentially wasted 10 years of my life (yes, it took me 9 years and 2 schools to finish my Bachelor's degree) working on two different majors, only to find out that I hated teaching and I made a terrible accountant.  Luckily, I was able to find a master's program where I could utilize my undergraduate degree and combine the two to find the ultimate career.  Otherwise, I would be paying back $40K in student loans for a useless degree.  (By the way, being a self-supporting full-time student is HARD!)

I think pushing someone out the door with the first available degree is terrible, and colleges these days seem to be a on real kick to push everyone out the door as quickly as possible, not just the athletes.  The grad school suggestion wasn't a bad idea, except that it costs money to do that, and most of the people I know are broke by the time they graduate the first time.  Not to mention, some folks really aren't cut out for graduate school. 

On the other side of the coin, there are a lot of jobs out there that you can get with any degree, doesn't matter which one.  Likewise, many schools will hire teachers without teaching degrees if they have a teacher shortage or the person in question has something specific to offer.  For example, in high school I took upper level math from a former engineer who had played in the NFL.  I wasn't in on the hiring decision, but I feel pretty sure there was a reason he was hired.  For another example, I used my near-useless $40K degree to get a job as a secretary making $15K/year.  Yes, it now takes a college degree to be a secretary in some places.  And the pay still stinks.

So back to the original point, these schools should be encouraging their athletes to get their degrees in the proper program so when their budding NBA career crashes and burns in the operating room, they can get a job doing the next-best thing, rather than settling for the only low-pay job they can find.

[mythbuster]

On the issue of graduation in 4 years: At my last institution (a branch of U of most populous state) the plan for our major was a 5 year plan! This was the set up given by the department. And we were not alone. Almost all the science and engineering majors were recommended a 5 year plan since you could not guarantee getting into the big pre-req courses when you wanted. I was convinced that this was a money generating scheme for the state, since it was also impossible to test out of these pre-reqs. The only student who I knew who got out in 4 years took classes during summer as well.

[zharkov]

I think pushing someone out the door with the first available degree is terrible, and colleges these days seem to be a on real kick to push everyone out the door as quickly as possible, not just the athletes. 

Colleges are measured by the "powers that be" on their graduation rate, which is the percentage of students who begin vs. who graduate in 6 years.  Thus, they are motivated to get students through to graduation. (And "powers that be" = Federal Financial Aid honchos, US Dept of Ed, accreditors, and state boards of ed.)

From the 50s through the 70s, various "alternative" or "non traditional" colleges and programs were set up that ignored the "by the numbers" way of doing things.  Perhaps a model would be based on exploring one's interests, with faculty mentors, and one could graduate when one felt ready. Maybe that is 3 years; maybe 5 or 8. What a nice idea.

Fast forward: Many of these "hippie colleges", as their detractors called them, have folded, and the rest have become more traditional. If I tried to start something like that today in my state, there is no way the state board of ed or the accreditor would OK it.  Which I think is a shame.





 

 

[spork]

Face it, college is the new high school and intercollegiate athletics is the new recess.