June 30, 2008

NCAA Imposes Stiffer Penalties for Academic Performance of Midlevel Division I Teams

The NCAA punishes athletics programs at midlevel Division I colleges more harshly for having low academic-progress rates than it does teams in marquee conferences like the Big Ten or the Pacific-10, according to an analysis published today in USA Today.

In its latest round of penalties for low academic performance, released last month, the NCAA sanctioned more than 200 teams at 123 Division I institutions for having low academic-progress rates.

But as USA Today explains, the six wealthiest and highest-profile conferences, which make up nearly 20 percent of the NCAA’s Division I membership (Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-10, and Southeastern), accounted for less than 10 percent of the scholarship cuts the NCAA doled out as part of the penalties.

Two midlevel programs — San Jose State University and the University of Alabama at Birmingham — lost more scholarships for poor academic performance than all 65 institutions in the power conferences, the report said.

USA Today said one possible explanation for the disparate results is that richer colleges can provide their athletes with more academic support, including summer school, and can afford to use airplanes, not buses, to transport their players to away games, making for less time missed in the classroom. —Libby Sander

Comments

1. Wieberg’s article illustrated the flaws in the APR. The NCAA is unsure of what these scores predict and punitive measures are administered disparately. It was quite predictable that the NCAA would be forced to hand out waivers to the power conference schools to protect their product. The scores have become so meaningless and watered down that it is obvious that NCAA Academic Reform has failed. I loved the quotes from Coach Martelli of St. Joseph’s Men’s Basketball. He blames everyone; society, tutoring, faculty, parents, the community. Who selects these athletes? Who creates the environment? It’s the coach … stupid. The NCAA will continue to protect their cash cow MBB and coaches. When will they admit to a flawed system?

   — Sherman    Jun 30, 04:46 PM    #

2. It is simple. NO SCHOOL that doesn’t graduate 2/3 of its athletes within five years should lose 10% of its scholarships for each year it fails. 40% after 4 years, the supposed life of an academic generation, would get things done. I don’t care if it is Harvard, my alma mater, or my favorite (and home state), U of Michigan.

   — William Allin Storrer    Jun 30, 05:56 PM    #

3. Seems to me a better penalty would be to reduce the salaries of the coaches rather than reduce the (already paltry) support of unremunerated student-athletes. Salary reductions WOULD provide genuine incentive to ensuring that student-athletes graduate.

   — jm    Jun 30, 10:24 PM    #

4. I agree with the basic premise in #2 that universities need to be held accountable for graduating their athletes, but one has to make sure that the cure isn’t worse than the disease. If the top programs are held to draconian graduation rates (higher in some cases than their student body achieves overall), then, by gum, that will happen, even if the student athletes don’t actually get better educations than they did before the measures were put into place. Look at the recent Ann Arbor News stories surrounding #2’s own favorite team, Michigan, in which it was claimed that student athletes were getting preferential treatment from one professor and from an entire degree program. Those particular claims were pretty thoroughly discredited by two university investigations into the matter (and by the revelation in the student newspaper of some of the shenanigans of the reporters covering the matter). However, if you want to move more such stories about the top programs from the category of newspaper myth to reality, overly punitive graduation requirements are a good way to do it.

   — Atokal    Jul 1, 08:00 AM    #

5. I have an idea – let’s put the student-athletes on a salary and do away with the whole charade of amateur status. It would make life much, much simpler.

   — Al    Jul 1, 10:48 AM    #

6. Measuring graduation rates is indeed a charade. Yes, some programs have a “respectable” rate of graduating athletes, but these grads often take gut courses, major in fields that have little academic rigor (coaching, general studies), and are placed in courses taught by profs who wouldn’t recognize an academic standard if it slept in their bed. The whole enterprise ought to be called academic gerrymandering.

   — Gary    Jul 1, 11:09 AM    #

7. As a student at a Big 10 University, I can tell you that football majors are ridiculous. I completely agree with #6. A degree in “Organizational Leadership Supervision” or “Law and Society” gives you absolutely nothing, and its a disgrace to the quality institution I hail from that these guys get a degree from the same institution I do. Some of them can’t even read! I started looking at plans of study, even with my two physical science majors, I can pick up a football major entirely in my senior year!

   I contend that football majors need to be gotten rid of and departments that coddle athletes and athletic departments that pressure them into doing it need to be punished heavily.

   — Shakeel    Jul 1, 01:24 PM    #

8. I would appreciate it if Gary and Shakeel would share with us a list of the majors that lack academic rigor and/or give you nothing at your respective institutions. Why not also list if possible the number of students who graduate from those programs who are not athletes as a way of showing that this problem is larger than just athletics? I await your lists and the name of your schools.

   — Mike    Jul 1, 04:03 PM    #

9. I enjoy latching on to the “exceptions.” My favorite team (in one of the power conferences) has a quarterback double majoring in economics and finance, and a DE majoring in chemistry, and both ended the semester with nearly 4.0s.

   — deborah    Jul 1, 04:09 PM    #

10. I agree with Mike. I resent the fact that “Organizational Leadership Supervision” (and similar) majors get a bachelor’s degree which is theoretically equivalent to my bachelor’s in biology. However, I bet there are still problems, over and above this, with athletes. Are they getting preferential grades even in their “Leadership” classes? How pervasive is this problem? I can’t hazard a guess myself – I don’t see many athletes in my science classes.
    And what about the teachers who enable this process by passing athletes who perform poorly? Is there no way to censure them?

    — Dianne    Jul 1, 06:56 PM    #

11. If “athletic trade workers” were paid, then athletes could stay in college. Instead, we see “athletic trade workers” giving away their performances in return for worthless certificates of graduation.

    — Daniel    Jul 1, 07:51 PM    #

12. How about an external standard, independent of any college, program, or professor. The SAT (M and V), yes, the good old SAT. The college can admit anyone, but until he gets a 1000, he cannot represent the college. Think of the effort a college, and its individual professors, will make to educate its competitive students to avoid the embarrassment of one of their admitted – and passing – students not being able to match a high school benchmark.

    — richard    Jul 1, 08:18 PM    #

13. 1000 on SAT M+V? Very funny. A guy who can break 1000 in the D-1 football world is considered the next Einstein.

    — Carlo    Jul 2, 02:51 PM    #

14. The NCAA creates its own nightmares. While most athletes are nowhere near as inept as Gary and Shakeel would like us to believe and I have yet to see an athletic department be the creator of one of the alleged “gut” majors athletes and other students enroll in, the NCAA fights so hard to “prove” its athletes are sound students it winds up providing the impetus for more chicanery. If we in athletics would simply take pride in what we do and let those who don’t see the value in it take their shots, everyone would be better off. Instead, we have this Perpetual Reform Movement that has been going since the 19th Century and accomplishing little. Colleges probably aren’t the best vessel to contain so-called “elite sport,” but that has been our system since before Teddy Roosevelt’s call to reform college football and it shows no sign of changing. Athletics professionals should be ethical and concerned for their student-athletes and — how this for a new idea? — others in the academy should allow that maybe we do have some integrity and maybe we aren’t always out to exploit, cheat and disgrace all that somebody or other stands for.

    — Dave    Jul 2, 04:10 PM    #

15. It seems as if one of the main problems is the lack of uniformity of punishment. Just how bad was the performance at the power conference schools that resulted in loss of scholarships. How does the NCAA hope to have any credibility while punishing the less powerful and letting the more powerful go relatively unscathed.

    — E. G.    Jul 3, 12:11 PM    #

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