The (Kentucky) Empire Strikes Back

[KeithK]

The study only counted kids who stayed and didnt graduate.. quiting/leaving/transferring dont count.. can you really stay for 4-6 years andf not graduate unless the school isnt trying or you probably shouldnt have been admitted.

I can think of at least one poster on this board who could comment on this very knowledgeably.

[Towerroad]

The real issue is that the elite athletic programs (including CU Hockey) are really the minor leagues for professional sports. These athletes can make a lot of money for their respective programs and the Universities, like any other business want to make as much money as possible while paying as little as possible.

The easiest and most honest solution is to remove the charade of the student/athlete at these elite programs and pay the players what they are worth. At a minimum if a player does not graduate or make it to the pros (the most common outcome in some of the programs mentioned, particularly if you are black) then the player, who was really only there to make money for the program, should get paid.

If you want to see pure student athletes look to women's sports or wrestling, fencing, track, cross country, field hockey etc.

[KeithK]

The easiest and most honest solution is to remove the charade of the student/athlete at these elite programs and pay the players what they are worth. At a minimum if a player does not graduate or make it to the pros (the most common outcome in some of the programs mentioned, particularly if you are black) then the player, who was really only there to make money for the program, should get paid.

I heard this "solution" a lot of times but even after all the repetition it remains a bad idea. Academic institutions shouldn't be running minor league sports teams as a side venture. It's bad enough that this is de facto true right now in some places. Principles aside, it wouldn't work. If Kentucky had to pay their bball players something akin to their market value as basketball players then the sport wouldn't be the cash cow it is now.

The best thing would be for real minor leagues to crop up for football and basketball. Have a development path for the kids who truly don't care about academics and just want to advance athletically. Easier sad than done, especially since the NC$$ is apparently happy filling this role.

[ugarte]

The best thing would be for real minor leagues to crop up for football and basketball. Have a development path for the kids who truly don't care about academics and just want to advance athletically. Easier sad than done, especially since the NC$$ is apparently happy filling this role.

In basketball, this is starting to happen. Elite players who don't want to go to college are either going overseas after high school (Brandon Jennings) and the NBDL is acting as the viable minor league that the CBA used to be.

Football will never have a minor league as a substitute for college because it makes no sense for anyone, NFL or NCAA to develop it. And nobody goes straight to the NFL out of high school because there has never been an 18 year old physically developed and sufficiently drilled in the complexities of the game to play at the NFL level and never will be.

[Towerroad]

The easiest and most honest solution is to remove the charade of the student/athlete at these elite programs and pay the players what they are worth. At a minimum if a player does not graduate or make it to the pros (the most common outcome in some of the programs mentioned, particularly if you are black) then the player, who was really only there to make money for the program, should get paid.

I heard this "solution" a lot of times but even after all the repetition it remains a bad idea. Academic institutions shouldn't be running minor league sports teams as a side venture. It's bad enough that this is de facto true right now in some places. Principles aside, it wouldn't work. If Kentucky had to pay their bball players something akin to their market value as basketball players then the sport wouldn't be the cash cow it is now.

The best thing would be for real minor leagues to crop up for football and basketball. Have a development path for the kids who truly don't care about academics and just want to advance athletically. Easier sad than done, especially since the NC$$ is apparently happy filling this role.

"Principles aside, it wouldn't work." I think it would work quite nicely for the athlete. The fact that some of the Universities in question would no longer be able to exploit the athlete who chooses to attend but has little interest in an education is hardly worth consideration.

As an aside a 40% graduation rate is pretty pitiful threshold.

[min]

I don't mean to open a can of worms, but can someone remind me again why Cornell and the other Ivies don't offer athletic scholarships? It can't all be about academics and student standards. Other "smart" schools (Stanford, Cal, Duke, Michigan, you name it) offer them, and I don't believe their academic reputations have suffered one iota (at least in the minds of the general public) as consequence.

To borrow another Star Wars analogy, do athletic scholarships necessarily represent the "dark side"? ::innocent::

[ugarte]

The easiest and most honest solution is to remove the charade of the student/athlete at these elite programs and pay the players what they are worth. At a minimum if a player does not graduate or make it to the pros (the most common outcome in some of the programs mentioned, particularly if you are black) then the player, who was really only there to make money for the program, should get paid.

I heard this "solution" a lot of times but even after all the repetition it remains a bad idea. Academic institutions shouldn't be running minor league sports teams as a side venture. It's bad enough that this is de facto true right now in some places. Principles aside, it wouldn't work. If Kentucky had to pay their bball players something akin to their market value as basketball players then the sport wouldn't be the cash cow it is now.

The best thing would be for real minor leagues to crop up for football and basketball. Have a development path for the kids who truly don't care about academics and just want to advance athletically. Easier sad than done, especially since the NC$$ is apparently happy filling this role.

"Principles aside, it wouldn't work." I think it would work quite nicely for the athlete. The fact that some of the Universities in question would no longer be able to exploit the athlete who chooses to attend but has little interest in an education is hardly worth consideration.

As an aside a 40% graduation rate is pretty pitiful threshold.

If it doesn't work for the school, it doesn't happen. Your principles have to align at least a little with practicalities if you want to talk about what "should" be done. Exploitation is in the eye of the beholder, anyway. They are "officially" given a free education and unofficially receive BMOC status and, for the best of them, under the table payments that we choose to ignore until it becomes egregious.

[KeithK]

The easiest and most honest solution is to remove the charade of the student/athlete at these elite programs and pay the players what they are worth. At a minimum if a player does not graduate or make it to the pros (the most common outcome in some of the programs mentioned, particularly if you are black) then the player, who was really only there to make money for the program, should get paid.

I heard this "solution" a lot of times but even after all the repetition it remains a bad idea. Academic institutions shouldn't be running minor league sports teams as a side venture. It's bad enough that this is de facto true right now in some places. Principles aside, it wouldn't work. If Kentucky had to pay their bball players something akin to their market value as basketball players then the sport wouldn't be the cash cow it is now.

The best thing would be for real minor leagues to crop up for football and basketball. Have a development path for the kids who truly don't care about academics and just want to advance athletically. Easier sad than done, especially since the NC$$ is apparently happy filling this role.

"Principles aside, it wouldn't work." I think it would work quite nicely for the athlete. The fact that some of the Universities in question would no longer be able to exploit the athlete who chooses to attend but has little interest in an education is hardly worth consideration.

As an aside a 40% graduation rate is pretty pitiful threshold.

If it doesn't work for the school, it doesn't happen. Your principles have to align at least a little with practicalities if you want to talk about what "should" be done. Exploitation is in the eye of the beholder, anyway. They are "officially" given a free education and unofficially receive BMOC status and, for the best of them, under the table payments that we choose to ignore until it becomes egregious.

The athletes are certainly "exploited" according to the first definition on m-w.com "To make productive use of".  As for the second, "to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage", that's subjective as ugarte says.

[nshapiro]

I don't mean to open a can of worms, but can someone remind me again why Cornell and the other Ivies don't offer athletic scholarships? It can't all be about academics and student standards. Other "smart" schools (Stanford, Cal, Duke, Michigan, you name it) offer them, and I don't believe their academic reputations have suffered one iota (at least in the minds of the general public) as consequence.

To borrow another Star Wars analogy, do athletic scholarships necessarily represent the "dark side"?  
 

The Ivies and many other schools offer only need-based aid.  That means that brilliant scholars, artists, musicians and athletes qualify for aid just like all other admitted students.

[nshapiro]

oops.  fixed format in re-post

[nshapiro]

While I obviously don't have data to support this, I wonder whether it is completely fair to vilify UK basketball based on the results of this study.  

WHY don't their players graduate?  As an example, if you have 10 players in a recruiting class and 2 transfer because of lack of playing time and 3 leave early for the NBA, that reduces your graduation rate to 50%.  If 2 out of the 10 recruits drop out/don't graduate because of poor academic performance, the graduation rate is now 30%.  But as this example illustrates, the 30% graduation rate doesn't mean that 7 out of 10 recruits in a class are "failures."

I get it that some programs in many major sports are factories designed to win championships and not educate students, but to rely on the NCAA graduation rate data without exploring other factors is oversimplifying the issue.

I don't have a problem with transfers, but players who leave early for the NBA should definitely be counted against your graduation rate.  Why on earth wouldn't they?  Those players left without graduating - isn't that what a "graduation rate" is all about?

"Graduation rate" is supposed to be a proxy for "making students employable." If they are voluntarily leaving college to make six/seven-figure salaries in the NBA, it is ridiculous to penalize the school. I'd be willing to compromise and say that players who aren't drafted or otherwise signed to pro contracts should count against the school.

That's not at all what graduation rate means to me.  Graduation means you completed the level and quality of work required to indicate that you are a college-educated person.  There are plenty of magna cum laude graduates who have trouble finding a job, and loads of dropouts who excel in the working world.  Colleges already track job placement rates separately from graduation rates, so there's no reason why either should be a proxy for the other.  They each tell a different part of the story, and I think graduation rate is the correct one to use for grading whether the athletic programs are detrimental or helpful to the schools' academic missions.

So how would you classify a brilliant student who leaves Cornell after her junior year because she was admitted to Vet School? A dropout?

[Towerroad]

The easiest and most honest solution is to remove the charade of the student/athlete at these elite programs and pay the players what they are worth. At a minimum if a player does not graduate or make it to the pros (the most common outcome in some of the programs mentioned, particularly if you are black) then the player, who was really only there to make money for the program, should get paid.

I heard this "solution" a lot of times but even after all the repetition it remains a bad idea. Academic institutions shouldn't be running minor league sports teams as a side venture. It's bad enough that this is de facto true right now in some places. Principles aside, it wouldn't work. If Kentucky had to pay their bball players something akin to their market value as basketball players then the sport wouldn't be the cash cow it is now.

The best thing would be for real minor leagues to crop up for football and basketball. Have a development path for the kids who truly don't care about academics and just want to advance athletically. Easier sad than done, especially since the NC$$ is apparently happy filling this role.

"Principles aside, it wouldn't work." I think it would work quite nicely for the athlete. The fact that some of the Universities in question would no longer be able to exploit the athlete who chooses to attend but has little interest in an education is hardly worth consideration.

As an aside a 40% graduation rate is pretty pitiful threshold.

If it doesn't work for the school, it doesn't happen. Your principles have to align at least a little with practicalities if you want to talk about what "should" be done. Exploitation is in the eye of the beholder, anyway. They are "officially" given a free education and unofficially receive BMOC status and, for the best of them, under the table payments that we choose to ignore until it becomes egregious.

The athletes are certainly "exploited" according to the first definition on m-w.com "To make productive use of".  As for the second, "to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage", that's subjective as ugarte says.

Yes, it does have to work for the institution for it to happen. I admit that the use of the term "exploited" has a subjective component. But lets not hide behind the fiction that some of these would-be NBA/NHL/NFL players are taking courses of study that are comparable to those taken by the rest of the student body or being held to the same standards of conduct and rigor.

I exempted the MLB because they have a tradition of drafting out of High School thus permitting those desiring to pursue an athletic career a clean economic opportunity.

[KeithK]

While I obviously don't have data to support this, I wonder whether it is completely fair to vilify UK basketball based on the results of this study.  

WHY don't their players graduate?  As an example, if you have 10 players in a recruiting class and 2 transfer because of lack of playing time and 3 leave early for the NBA, that reduces your graduation rate to 50%.  If 2 out of the 10 recruits drop out/don't graduate because of poor academic performance, the graduation rate is now 30%.  But as this example illustrates, the 30% graduation rate doesn't mean that 7 out of 10 recruits in a class are "failures."

I get it that some programs in many major sports are factories designed to win championships and not educate students, but to rely on the NCAA graduation rate data without exploring other factors is oversimplifying the issue.

I don't have a problem with transfers, but players who leave early for the NBA should definitely be counted against your graduation rate.  Why on earth wouldn't they?  Those players left without graduating - isn't that what a "graduation rate" is all about?

"Graduation rate" is supposed to be a proxy for "making students employable." If they are voluntarily leaving college to make six/seven-figure salaries in the NBA, it is ridiculous to penalize the school. I'd be willing to compromise and say that players who aren't drafted or otherwise signed to pro contracts should count against the school.

That's not at all what graduation rate means to me.  Graduation means you completed the level and quality of work required to indicate that you are a college-educated person.  There are plenty of magna cum laude graduates who have trouble finding a job, and loads of dropouts who excel in the working world.  Colleges already track job placement rates separately from graduation rates, so there's no reason why either should be a proxy for the other.  They each tell a different part of the story, and I think graduation rate is the correct one to use for grading whether the athletic programs are detrimental or helpful to the schools' academic missions.

So how would you classify a brilliant student who leaves Cornell after her junior year because she was admitted to Vet School? A dropout?

Yes, that student would be a dropout if she didn't actually complete her degree. Not sure how she got into Vet School without a degree though (grad school without a bachelors is not unheard of but it is rare AFAIK).  Regardless, this is probably a sufficiently unlikely occurrence that it wouldn't skew the stats in any significant way.

[David Harding]

While I obviously don't have data to support this, I wonder whether it is completely fair to vilify UK basketball based on the results of this study.  

WHY don't their players graduate?  As an example, if you have 10 players in a recruiting class and 2 transfer because of lack of playing time and 3 leave early for the NBA, that reduces your graduation rate to 50%.  If 2 out of the 10 recruits drop out/don't graduate because of poor academic performance, the graduation rate is now 30%.  But as this example illustrates, the 30% graduation rate doesn't mean that 7 out of 10 recruits in a class are "failures."

I get it that some programs in many major sports are factories designed to win championships and not educate students, but to rely on the NCAA graduation rate data without exploring other factors is oversimplifying the issue.

I don't have a problem with transfers, but players who leave early for the NBA should definitely be counted against your graduation rate.  Why on earth wouldn't they?  Those players left without graduating - isn't that what a "graduation rate" is all about?

"Graduation rate" is supposed to be a proxy for "making students employable." If they are voluntarily leaving college to make six/seven-figure salaries in the NBA, it is ridiculous to penalize the school. I'd be willing to compromise and say that players who aren't drafted or otherwise signed to pro contracts should count against the school.

That's not at all what graduation rate means to me.  Graduation means you completed the level and quality of work required to indicate that you are a college-educated person.  There are plenty of magna cum laude graduates who have trouble finding a job, and loads of dropouts who excel in the working world.  Colleges already track job placement rates separately from graduation rates, so there's no reason why either should be a proxy for the other.  They each tell a different part of the story, and I think graduation rate is the correct one to use for grading whether the athletic programs are detrimental or helpful to the schools' academic missions.

So how would you classify a brilliant student who leaves Cornell after her junior year because she was admitted to Vet School? A dropout?

Yes, that student would be a dropout if she didn't actually complete her degree. Not sure how she got into Vet School without a degree though (grad school without a bachelors is not unheard of but it is rare AFAIK).  Regardless, this is probably a sufficiently unlikely occurrence that it wouldn't skew the stats in any significant way.

The Vet School Admissions site discusses an early admission process.  You apply and are notified at the end of your sophomore year, spend junior year doing something interesting, then start.  

Completion of a baccalaureate degree prior to matriculation is not required.