AJC > Sports > Tech > Blog > Archives > 2007 > October > 08
Monday, October 8, 2007
Bad records in classroom and on field
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last week was a rotten one for Georgia Tech. And the 28-26 loss at Maryland, with another bad start by the defense, and a miserable first half for the offense, and some second-guessable decisions at the end, was only part of it.
Yes, it’s not good to have a football team that’s 3-3, 1-3 in the ACC, the worst combination of overall and ACC record at this point of the season since 1994. (The 2003 team started 3-3 overall. The 2002 team started 1-3 in the ACC.)
But first came the annual release of Division I teams’ graduation rates, and the Yellow Jackets ranked last in the ACC. I’ve heard and read all the arguments about graduation rates, that Tech doesn’t have an easy major in which to hide athletes, that Tech is a difficult school for all students, that Player X went on to make a lot of money in the pros so who cares if he graduated? Frankly, none of those arguments hold water.
If Tech doesn’t have an easy major in which to hide athletes, it still has the responsibility to recruit athletes who can compete in the classroom. If that leads to more of a competitive disadvantage on the field, so what? Are you willing to buy victories at the price of your academic mission?
Sure, Tech is a difficult school for students at large, not just athletes. But if Darryl Richard can graduate in three years, is it asking too much that Tech find other athletes who can graduate in six? And it’s a myth that athletes are doing poorly but doing a lot like other students.
Here’s a chart we published last November, comparing athletes’ graduation rates with graduation rates for the student body as a whole. (We’ll be printing another one in a month or so when we get this year’s figures. The reason last week’s story didn’t include such a comparison is that I was writing about the NCAA graduation success rate, a formula different from the one used to calculate graduation rates for the overall student body.)
Graduation rates for the 1999 freshman classes, using the federal government’s formula (graduation rate equals number who have graduated from that school within six years of enrollment divided by number of freshmen who enrolled):
ACC
School …………….All……..Athletes……..Diff.
Boston College …91…………90……………..1
Clemson ………….75…………63 …………..12
Duke ………………93………….91…………….2
Florida State………66…………57…………….9
Georgia Tech …….76…………54 …………..22
Maryland ………….77………….76…………….1
Miami ………………71………….68…………….3
N. Carolina ……….84 …………73 …………..11
N.C. State …………71 ………..56 …………..15
Virginia …………….93………….74 …………..19
Virginia Tech ……..76………….63 …………..13
Wake Forest ……….88 …………74 …………..14
As you can see, Tech’s athletes performed less like their fellow students than any other group in the ACC.
The anecdotal arguments that say grad rates aren’t important because some pro players make a lot of money without earning a degree has two serious flaws. First, a very small percentage of Tech’s non-graduates go on to pro careers. Second, and I know some of you will disagree with me on this, college isn’t about helping people make money, it’s about helping people get educated. Tech isn’t supposed to be like those guys on TV telling me how I can make millions in real estate buying houses with no money down. It’s supposed to have a higher purpose than that.
The good news is that the academic progress rate data (showing how well Tech retains players and keeps them eligible) suggest current athletes will graduate at higher rates than those who enrolled in the late 1990s. (Graduation rates will dip because of the so-called flunk-gate of the early 2000s, but they should rise after that.)
(The APR, not graduation rates, can trigger sanctions such as scholarship cuts and bans on postseason competition. Apparently, I confused some people when I wrote the NCAA’s graduation success rate doesn’t “penalize” schools for players who leave with good academic standing and eligibility remaining. What I meant to say is those players are omitted from the calculation in the NCAA’s formula, and thus the team’s graduation success rate isn’t lower — the schools aren’t penalized under the formula — when players transfer if they would have been eligible had they stayed. That makes it different from the federal government’s graduation rate formula.)
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