AJC > Sports > Tech > Blog > Archives > 2006 > November > 10
Friday, November 10, 2006
Degree worth more than title
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sometimes we in the newspaper business are accused of timing the publication of a story to embarrass someone, or to hurt somebody’s recruiting, or to rain on someone’s parade. It’s as untrue as most conspiracy theories.
But just as Georgia Tech is set to win a football championship for the first time in eight years, I wrote a news story about Tech finishing last in the ACC … in athlete graduation rates. I know from the reaction to past stories what some of the reactions will be to this one, whose timing, by the way, was set by the NCAA’s decision to release the figures on Thursday.
Sure, Tech’s curriculum is challenging. So are the curricula of most other ACC schools. Sure, the graduation rate for all students at Tech is lower than the graduation rate for all students at Duke or Boston College. But that doesn’t explain why the gap between Tech’s student body graduation rate and athlete-only graduation rate is so huge. Sure, Tech doesn’t have “easy” majors in which to hide lower-talent students. But that doesn’t affect the responsibility of the institute to recruit players who can compete in the majors it does have.
The numbers released Thursday are for athletes who enrolled in 1999. Those figures tell nothing about the athletes on campus today. One can only hope they fare better. Tech says it sees signs — in the academic progress rate, for instance — that they will.
In the end, a Tech degree will be far more valuable to the players than an ACC Coastal Division championship.
