Graduation Rates for Athletes Hold Steady

Football and men's basketball players continue to perform poorly in the classroom

By WELCH SUGGS

Andy Geiger isn't making any excuses. Ohio State University, where he is the athletics director, has done a lousy job this decade of making sure athletes graduate. And he knows it.

"We must do better, and we can do better," says Mr. Geiger. "But that doesn't help with the current data."

The data, released by the National Collegiate Athletic Association last week, show that Ohio State graduated only 18 percent of its basketball

ALSO SEE: Database: Graduation Rates of Athletes and Other Students Who Entered College in 1993-94 Tables: Graduation Rates at NCAA Division I Colleges Tables: Best and Worst Graduation Rates in Division I Charts: Trends Over Time Tables: The Academic Performance of Division I Black Athletes

players and 28 percent of its football players who came to Columbus as scholarship athletes from 1990-91 to 1993-94. Fewer than a fifth of the black men who came to play on Buckeye teams during that period received their degrees, putting Ohio State near the bottom of Division I.

Ohio State certainly isn't the only institution with problems. While graduation rates for athletes largely held steady from last year's report, male athletes -- particularly football and basketball players -- continued to have trouble in the classroom. The Chronicle will publish an analysis of data for institutions in Division II later this month.

In Division I, 42 percent of the basketball players who started college in 1993-94 earned their degrees within six years, as did 48 percent of their football-playing classmates. By comparison, 54 percent of male students and 51 percent of all male athletes graduated within the same time period.

The only major drop in graduation rate in the 1993-94 entering class occurred among white male football players at Division I-A institutions: Only 55 percent of them graduated, the lowest rate recorded since the N.C.A.A. began keeping records 10 years ago. There was no comparable drop-off among black football players or athletes in other sports.

"We're concerned about the decline in rates among football players," Cedric W. Dempsey, the N.C.A.A.'s president, said in a written statement. "We need to start looking at what some of the reasons might be for this decline."

In January, the association's Division I board of directors will discuss plans for a wide-ranging study of football issues.

The board spent the past two years on a similar study of problems with men's basketball players, including their relatively poor academic performances. This year, players in men's basketball again had the worst graduation rates of any sport in the survey.

Only 34 percent of black male basketball players earned their degrees, up a percentage point from last year, compared with 56 percent of white players. Only seven colleges graduated all of the black players who enrolled from 1990-91 to 1993-94: Bucknell University, the College of the Holy Cross, Manhattan College, Northwestern University, Providence College, Southern Utah University, and Stanford University. However, 47 institutions, ranging from powerhouses like the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor to small-time programs like Samford University, did not graduate a single black player who entered during that time period.

One of the N.C.A.A.'s plans is to take scholarships away from teams that graduate fewer than half of their basketball players, a rule that could go into effect as early as the 2001-2 academic year. As many as 180 of the 320 colleges could lose a grant based on this year's data; however, because the N.C.A.A. will not count players who transferred or left for the professional leagues in good academic standing, the actual number probably will be far lower.

Over all, athletes graduate at rates that are similar to, and sometimes better than, those of other students. Of the class that entered in 1993-94, 56 percent of all athletes graduated, which is two percentage points higher than the rate for all students. Male athletes trailed male students by four percentage points (47 percent to 51 percent), while female athletes did much better than other women on campus: 68 percent of them graduated, compared with 59 percent of all female students.

The graduation-rates report also points to the prevalence and success of international athletes at N.C.A.A. institutions. Even though universities have relatively few foreign students, there were more "nonresident alien" athletes on scholarship at N.C.A.A. colleges than there were American Indian, Asian, or Hispanic athletes. A full 91 percent of them graduated, nearly 30 percentage points higher than athletes of Asian or Pacific Island ancestry, who had the next-best set of graduation rates.

On the whole, athletes from most ethnic backgrounds graduate at rates comparable to or better than students from the same groups. Half of the 820 Hispanic athletes at Division I institutions graduated within six years, compared with just 38 percent of the Hispanic students at those colleges. The same holds true for all the other ethnic groups in the study, except for Asian athletes: Only 64 percent of them graduated, while 66 percent of all Asian students did.

That's not entirely unexpected. Athletes have always had higher graduation rates than students as a whole, with notable exceptions cited earlier. Athletics directors point out that athletes have access to tutoring and other academic-support services that often are much more intense than programs available to other students. And all the athletes in the survey are receiving scholarships, meaning that they don't have to face the financial pressures that often force other students out of college before they finish their degrees.

Mr. Geiger can account for most of Ohio State's athletes in the survey. Many of the football players left college early for the N.F.L. Three of them have since earned their degrees, but because the N.C.A.A. survey only accounts for athletes who graduate within six years of enrolling, they don't appear in Ohio State's statistics. A few others transferred and graduated from other institutions, and some decided college wasn't for them.

"When you begin to put stories to statistics, the picture begins to unfold in a different way," Mr. Geiger says. "But that doesn't excuse the fact that we didn't graduate more people."

Academic support has been on Mr. Geiger's mind fairly constantly since last year, when Sports Illustrated did a story on Andy Katzenmoyer, the Buckeyes' star linebacker at the time.

According to the magazine, Mr. Katzenmoyer took classes like golf and AIDS awareness during summer school to stay eligible for his final season at Ohio State, and he complained that he was at the university to play football, not to attend classes.

"That was a very unpleasant, unhappy situation -- Andy was treated very unfairly by a national magazine," Mr. Geiger says. "Andy is not someone who was dedicated to excellence in the classroom, but he left here in good standing, and was a bit better than he's been portrayed."

But the controversy, along with the academic scandal at Ohio State's conference rival, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, has caused Mr. Geiger and other Ohio State officials to reconsider how the department both recruits athletes and handles academic support for them.

He's personally reviewing all scholarship offers before they are made, and prodding coaches to recruit players with better chances of academic success.

"The quality of the student body is improving dramatically, and that is very much something our coaches need to become aware of," says Mr. Geiger. "It's not optional, whether or not we're going to work to recruit quality people."

Once these athletes get to Ohio State, they will find an academic-advising unit for athletes that is working out of a brand-new building and reporting both to the athletics department and to the vice president for academic affairs, an arrangement that Mr. Geiger hopes will strengthen the accountability of tutors and athletes alike.

But officials won't know for several years whether that's enough to solve Ohio State's problems.

"I don't think there's a tried-and-true formula that works," says Mr. Geiger, who has previously served as athletics director at the University of Maryland at College Park and Stanford University. "It's up to each institution to take the best proven practices and make them work in their own climate."

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