The NCAA Takes On Graduation Madness
The NCAA Takes On Graduation Madness
The NCAA blog covered our Graduation Madness campaign this morning. While Josh Centor, who blogs for the NCAA, is generally supportive of the campaign he takes issue with our data. Specifically, he feels our claim that 30 schools who qualified for March Madness don’t meet the NCAA’s minimum academic standards is inaccurate:
According to ThinkProgress.org: “of the 65 teams that qualified for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, 30 fail to meet minimum academic standards as defined by the NCAA.†That’s not exactly accurate. Two teams in the field had scores lower than the 925 cutoff, and both will be penalized with the loss of scholarships next season.
In order to adequately compensate for the lack of data and small sample size, the NCAA instituted a squad-size adjustment, or confidence boundary, that prevented a number of teams from facing penalties this year…they will have another year or two to change their behavior…
Actually, 30 schools in the field scored lower than the 925 cut-off, which is roughly equivalent to a 50% graduation rate. And the schools do not have a “year or two” to change their behavior. According to the NCAA’s own literature, these schools should not take comfort in the “squad size adjustment” and must act immediately to improve their academics:
Treating the squad-size adjustment as a safety net and not using a score below 925 as a signal for immediate academic reform may result in more serious penalties…[these teams] should be the subject of active review by the institution in determining steps to improve academic performance…Division I Committee on Academic Performance requires that institutions with teams below 925 develop and implement an academic improvement plan for these teams.
Corporate sponsors, who profit from these students by adorning them with their logos, shouldn’t wait to act either. Join Graduation Madness now and tell Nike, Adidas and Reebok to get off the academic sidelines.
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I think it’s great the NCAA responded already. Does everyone read ThinkProgress?
March 14th, 2006 at 11:05 amCollege sports. . . I guess they matter because some players go to the pros, but otherwise I couldn’t care less.
Take that wasted money and spend it on elementary and secondary-school PE programs. Then you’ll see a wise use of millions of dollars that will really result in higher test scores and lower rates of child obesity and diabetes.
March 14th, 2006 at 11:08 amThis campaign matters because so many college atheletes DON’T go pro. Secondary-school PE is great. But it doesn’t do any good for people already in college or getting ready to go.
March 14th, 2006 at 11:26 amAnyone else care?
March 14th, 2006 at 11:39 amWhere is the evil? Most of these athletes would be doing their chosen sport regardless of Nike’s or Addidas’ involvement. No one is taking money from the athletes. Nike and Addidas profit mainly through shoe and clothing sales.
Most of these athletes get scholarships – they are getting a benefit. Is the evil we are combatting here this: many athletes do not take full advantage of the benefit available?
The NCAA is already moving to push graduation standards up. Given that this is not life or death – why don’t we let the specialists (the NCAA, which typically acts in conjunction with college presidents) have a few years to fix the problem, now that they have started.
I am all for finishing things you start, but why should we limit these athlete’s choices by forcing them to do a 4 year degree if they perceive better options elsewhere?
I think that lax admission standards and grade inflation are more troublesome.
I am a fan of this site and read it multiple times a day. But this whole thing sounds like a catchy name in search of substance.
March 14th, 2006 at 11:58 amI do!!! I am glad that TP has finally gotten a forum to have a debate about the facts!!! The corporate sponsors are making BILLIONS off of these kids and the NCAA ELITE is making a handsome profit at their expense! Sure a scholarship is great, but many will lack the funds necessary to apply them while you have crooks like (NIKE, REEBOK, Television Sponsors, Chancellors and Coches) making millions…
My son is being recruited and for his sake, I hope that something is done about the corruption in colleges…
March 14th, 2006 at 11:59 amAgain, can you provide graduation rates and professional-career ratios for those top-tier schools that are making it to the NCAA tournament?
And how much of a difference do you actually think forcing people to get a random dumbed-down sociology degree is going to make in these athelete’s careers?
I find it hard to believe with all that’s going on in the country that THIS is where you’re focusing your time.
March 14th, 2006 at 12:03 pmYou say 30 teams don’t meet the 925 standard, they say only 2 don’t. Then you say, no, it’s really 30. Who’s right? Where are the statistics behind your claim and theirs?
March 14th, 2006 at 12:34 pmAll the data is available here. (We’re right.)
March 14th, 2006 at 12:44 pmUnless you compare the graduation rate of the student athletes to the OVERALL graduation rate of the school, the rate for the athletes means nothing. If a school only graduates 50% of their enrolled students, and only 48% of their athletes graduate, is this a big deal? And is it the basketball program’s fault?
Also the really really top-tier schools who attract several players per year who WILL have a career in the pros, have an artificially low number when their premier athletes do leave early to join the pros. Case in point. This year the University of Connecticut will no doubt lose SOPHOMORE Rudy Gay to the pros. That’s one student who won’t graduate. Is it UConn’s fault? They did too GOOD a job preparing him for the pros? If you penalize schools for having kids like this on their squads, or you try to force them to stay in school, you do know what will happen, don’t you? These kids won’t even get two years of college under their belts. They’ll go pro straight out of high school. Is that the preferred result just to elevate graduation rates?
It’s a wildly imperfect system, and it’s galling that so many people make so much money off the backs of these kids who get sanctioned if they accept a ride home from a booster, but the graduation rate issue isn’t the real issue. If those kids wearing Nikes on the court so Nike and their school get richer actually got a stipend to support themselves and their families while they played, maybe they’d stay in school. A couple of years ago UCONN player Charlie Villenueva (I’m a UConn fan, can you tell?) was forced to go pro a year earlier than he actually wanted to because his mother was injured in a car accident, couldn’t work, and someone needed to support the family. He went on to make millions in the pros, but you don’t think that situation doesn’t repeat itself all over the country for these poor inner city kids who got to go to college because they could play some ball? Of course it does. And it shouldn’t. When kids don’t graduate it’s not only because they’re not getting educated or don’t want to be educated. These kids make a commitment to their schools and to the NCAA. The schools should be able to make a similar commitment to the kids, but NCAA rules won’t allow it. Or the NCAA should step in. But they won’t. If you fix the problems with the disgusting money-grab that is college sports (especially basketball and football), then I suspect graduation rates would improve organically. Give the kids a REASON to graduate.
March 14th, 2006 at 12:55 pmThat’s why we are using the Academic Progress Rate and not a straight graduation rate. If a player leaves for the pros and is otherwise in good academic standing, the school is not penalized.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:01 pmIt depends on how you look at it. I work for the NCAA and wrote the post that Judd linked to. Only two teams in the men’s tournament have been penalized for falling below the 925 score. Other teams were below the 925 score (the 30 Judd references), but because of a small data set and sample size, a squad-size adjustment was instituted, and those other teams didn’t lose scholarships this year. The confidence boundary will be eliminated when the data is more complete, so those teams need to change their behavior immediately. If they don’t, they will be penalized when new sets of data are released in the next year or two. I hope that clarifies.
March 14th, 2006 at 1:01 pmI am astonished at the number of people who read this blog, and generally share my beliefs, who appear from reading these comments to not care about this issue. First in the interest of full disclosure I should admit that I work in higher education and am thus more vested in this than many but . . .
The popular college sports (basketball, football) have increasingly become areas where students are exploited, often on levels of race and class. If the point of a community is to be striving for social justice, often these athletes represnt groups who are disempowered in our society and ought to be the focus of attention. (Yes granted they have it better off than those who are making the shoes for the shoe companies-but this does not mean that both are not an issue.)
I encounter people all the time (sharing similar views to those surpirsingly represented here) who seem to think that athletes should be thankful for the “free ride” they are getting. As I commented yesterday here, I think these attitudes are informed by racist and classist ideologies, precisely the kind of ideologies we should be working to illiminate. The notion of “free ride” suggests that these athletes do not work, but are rather naturally gifted. Being a competitive athlete is an incredible amount of work, often these students work much harder than others to get into college, no they sometimes do not work at rasing an SAT score, but they work hours at practice none the less, and we should recognize what they do is hard work. The atheltic companies make a lot of money off selling apparel etc., which they do not return to the athletes, which the school does get a share of the profit. Why does not a share of this profit go into a scholarship fund to help these athletes finsih school when their four years of atheltic funds have expired? These are just one of the many questions I would ask, of what is fundamentally a broke system.
And for those who suggest the NCAA should solve this problem on their own . . .it was not until someone else took up the issue that black athletes were allowed to play at all. The NCAA is a conservative institution whose job it is to protect the schools, not foster social justice. And they are so in bed with these companies already that they are not likely to change the rules without outside pressure.
March 14th, 2006 at 2:28 pmAnd for the NCAA official response that some schools below the 925 margin are being given a grace period because of a small sample size. This might change the school, but it does not help the current athletes, a sample size of one is still one individual who the system failed . . .
March 14th, 2006 at 2:31 pmSome of you are still missing my point. For an organization that uses the word “Progress” in its name, as in “progressive,” I just don’t see how this relates in any way to the tenor of this site.
College sports are a bunch of elitist, useless crap. It has been completely taken over by corporate interests to make money, and, from what I gather, exploits college athletes. Well whoopty-doo! Meanwhile, we have millions of kids in elementary schools who have zero or minimal (1 hour a week) physical education/fitness and good nutrition programs. What does that translate to? Higher obesity rates that result in shorter lifespans, higher insurance rates, greater strain on an already overtaxed health care system. They have less energy to learn. They have increased childhood diseases like diabetes, which is reaching epidemic proportions.
College sports are entertainment. I’m talking about children’s LIVES.
March 14th, 2006 at 2:44 pmPS: Good god, I’m becoming Alan Alda.
March 14th, 2006 at 2:48 pmOkay let me see if I can explain how this is “progressive.” Academic Institutions are traditionaly places where we educate people on what it means to be responsible citizens, if educational institutions are not acting ethically (which in this case they are not) we ought to work to change this, make our institutions of higher learning ethical/just places.
And yes I would also be in favor of helping out kids reducing childhood obsesity etc. But one does not exclude the other. In fact they can often work together, witness how athletes how have a strong sense of ethical ties to a community often give back in the form of childhood fitness programs. And, these problems are in another sense connected, in so much as the lack of nutrition in elementary education comes from educational ties to corporations such as coke, pepsi, vending machines companies etc. But to say I don’t care about your problems help we with the ones I want seems horribly egocentric. Take a stand everywhere (especially considering signing the petition would take you . . .oh say 42 seconds depending on how fast you type)
March 14th, 2006 at 2:52 pmI appreciate you addressing my concerns. I’m still not convinced, but hey — more power to you.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:19 pmi DO NOT KNOW IF THIS IS TRUE OR NOT BUT I WAS TOLD YEARS AGO THAT UNLV, A MINION OF THE TOURNEY, HAS NEVER GRADUATED A BASKETBALL PLAYER.
A VERY SAD COMMENTARY INDEED.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:21 pmDave,
Other than the failure to fund more than four years of school, you have not said how these people are exploited. The fact that the school is making money off them doesn’t equate to exploitation to me. They’re getting what they came for: physical education, with expert coaching and playing time. One could say that all students are exploited, in the sense that their support of the academic beaurocracy results in their getting student teachers in an insitution devoted to getting research grants. Would you feel better if all athletes stayed in school and got their anthropology degree, the preferred “athlete field of interest” at Florida?With student coaches to help them along, and specific coaching on exams? There are a lot of college graduates out there not working in their field, driving taxicabs. Were they exploited too?
March 14th, 2006 at 3:39 pmI agree with everything the item implies, and everything posted on this thread (agreeable guy am I); and should that embrace any contradictions, then I disagree where needed to avoid the appearance of the same (but avoiding disagreement itself, is my intention in this matter)…
Because as disagreeable as our Political Discourse has become, I like to suspend all disagreement, when I’ve suspended with that Discourse.
Cool, the NCCA basketball tournament is here: I needed the break, but the better teams don’t need one (it’s not so much a running game that wins the tournament, as a slower style, complete with the PRESSURE and the ability to break it), but I do, need a break from that PRESSURE, that is; that is, from Political Discourse.
That the bulk of the so-called ’student athletes’ who take this stage are mostly misbehavin’ and insulting thugs, I accept (sounds like the Political Discourse crowd)…
But that they are all such goons, I deny (again, like the Political Discourse crowd)…
Two examples worth noting: This Friday, Pennsylvania plays Texas in the first round, 9:40 EST in (of all places) Dallas. And while I have no doubt that Texas has it’s share of misbehavin’ and insulting thugs (again, too similar to Political Discourse!), let it be known to all that Pennsylvannia shall field a team in which not one player has received an athletic scholarship to play basketball (those scholarships being the beginning of the corrupted process), for the reason that the Ivy League allows no athletic scholarships whatsoever.
And so think of it, a team composed of non-scholarship student athletes versus one where all the players, so-called ’student athletes’, are receiveing those scholarships (and most are misbehavin’ and insulting thugs, I have no doubt; and in Dallas, of all places).
With Pennsylvania, you shall see the true student athlete.
GO QUAKERS!
(Think of team nicknames: the devoutly Christian, non-violent, unassuming, Peace-loving QUAKERS, versus the violent and insanely mad bull that is the TEXAS LONGHORN; I was kind of looking forward to a break from the tones of Political Discourse)
The other example worth noting: On Thursday, we’ll have the Air Force Academy playing against the University of Illinois, 7:25 EST in San Diego. And while likewise the Air Force Academy shall also field a team without a single person receiving an athletic scholarship (versus a team on which every player has gotten one), it is for a different reason than that of the Ivy League’s Pennsylvania: because of course, everyone at the AFA is on a scholarship of sorts; none are receiving a free ride in exchange for playing hoops, or any other sport; they’re commitment is a little bit different, a little more serious, and a lot better than those at some other schools.
It’s not Pennsyvania I refer to, but the misbehavin’ and insulting thugs of Texas I mean (back to Political Discourse!).
GO QUAKERS!
March 14th, 2006 at 3:48 pmThe exploitation issue for me comes in two ways.
1. College athletes make money for the institution directly through their labor, and lots of money at that. We are talking millions of dollars of which they see nothing. To be sure this occurs with student researchers as well, but the level of exploitation is not nearily as drastic. And agian I am not arguing that academics as whole does not need reforming, just that this is one of the places to start.
2. The only long term pay-off for these athletes is a four year degree (in fact this is what they are promised-play for our school and we will give you education for four years). But in fact, and here is where the slippage occurs, as your anthropology point so apptly points to, the point of going to college is not a particular degree, but that you have a four year degree. After four years of playing, for those atheltes who do not make it to the pros the only benifit is that four year degree, a label to put next to their name when they apply for a job. If someone applies for a job with a degree their likelyhood of getting said job drastically increases. If education is about upward mobility it only works if you graduate the students, and these institutions betray this contract when they don’t graduate the students. When they earn money off of them and then don’t deliver the degree.
If we look at stastics from athletes who used their college scholarships to land a four year degree, and those who did not their life chances are drastically different. For a simple account of this read, “The Ticket Out” a book about the high school baseball team on which Darryl Strawberry played. Some of those other succesful players managed to use their atheltic abilities to improve their life chances, but now with schools graduating fewer and fewer students, this contract is getting broken.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:51 pmThe only long term pay-off for these athletes is a four year degree
On the contrary, the atheletes from which the school is making millions of dollars are provided a place in which they can showcase their talents. A basketball player at a school like Duke is given a great learning and growing experience as an athelete, and, much like students entering the workforce, is prepared for a professional career.
I agree that the ultra-strict rules against the players making any money while the universities make millions is ridiculous. But for top-tier atheletes that are generating that money, the fact that they often don’t receive degrees is one of the more minor ways that they are exploited.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:00 pmthe ultra-strict rules against the players making any money while the universities make millions is ridiculous. …for top-tier atheletes that are generating that money, the fact that they often don’t receive degrees is one of the more minor ways that they are exploited
I like nonsense, as long as nobody gets hurt by it.
How’s this for an Opinion on some of these basketbal players in the upcoming tournament: At any one ‘basketball program’ or another, say at the Univeristy of Texas for instance, I bet that in seven years time the players who are on that team now will be variously…
Gas Station Attendants, Used Car Salesman, and Car Thieves.
Insect Exterminators, Tele-Evangelists, and Political Lobbyists.
Department Store Detectives, Shoplifters, and Senior Domestic Policy Advisors to the President.
Basketball Coaches, Basketball Junkies, and Crackheads.
…and mostly because none of them will have college degrees; but then, that’s not why the so-called ’student athletes’ went to Texas in the first place, so who cares about them.
Their scholarships would have been better used, had they been given out based on academic performance or financial need.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:27 pmAfter you get done with this –
http://thinkprogress.org/march-madness
Make sure you look at this –
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060311/SPORTS/603110510
I really like ThinkProgress for all the work it does. But in this topic you are not seeing the whole picture. Stick to politics.
Mike
March 14th, 2006 at 9:41 pml think the game NCAA MARCH MADNESSS 2006 is the best man 2 man defense playing game and whe n i started playing i played with north carolina but the ywas sorry so in the long run i played with duke because they was raw as hell
April 14th, 2006 at 12:11 pm