Andy Rotherham notes that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have perilously low college graduation rates, and yet schools actually know how to give people the help they need to stay in school they do a pretty good job with their athletes and what's needed is to extend the same kind of support to everyone.
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Everyone an Athlete
11 Apr 2008 08:43 am
Comments (31)
"So everyone should have an honor student doing their homework for them?"
Right on. Sometimes, Matt, I wonder whether you've actually spent time in the real world.
It's Eduwonk your accusing of naivete, not Matt. And as one who has helped scholarship athletes, I just talked them through how to construct the assignment, I didn't do it for them.
Sometimes snarky cynicism is just annoying.
Sounds like we should calculate the yearly cost for this and compare it to the annual cost of keeping troops in Iraq.
The NCAA saturated the airwaves during tournament month with commercials. They emphasized the point many of the athletes we see eventually end up in the private sector in successful positions having nothing to do with the sports world. I wonder, does the NCAA do anything at their member schools to help non-athletes achieve post graduate success? Do they donate funds, help set up tutor systems or participate elsewhere in programs to spread their education related largesse outside the athletic department? Would they assist the child of the janitor that has swept the arena every day for 30 years? Or the son of the receptionist in the ticket department, who's toiled away on the phones her entire career?
Just maybe, the real problem is that too many unqualified young people are going to college, when they'd be better off with various types of vocational training.
I just talked them through how to construct the assignment, I didn't do it for them.
I'm a grad student at a school with a very prominent basketball team, and it's the same for me. I've actually been very impressed with how seriously the athletics department is about not allowing athletes to do no work. Yes, I know athletes can and do get by with very little academics in American universities. But that doesn't mean that the kind of support services and extra help available to them wouldn't help disadvantaged students immensely.
And as one who has helped scholarship athletes, I just talked them through how to construct the assignment, I didn't do it for them.
I tutored several of my fellow athletes in college. Never did their work for them. The big problem is students arriving at college completely unready for college academics. I tutored math and I was horrified to see how little so many of the freshmen knew.
Re Peter's comment: In the UK the ratio of population to universities is about 350K:1; in Germany it's about 250K:1; in the U.S. it's about 110K:1. Do we have too many universities? Probably.
You're not cynical enough, Matt. As the father of a college athlete in a minor (non-spectator) sport, I can tell you that schools with revenue-producing programs in the major sports actively recruit academic achievers for their minor sports precisely in order to increase the average graduation rate stats for all athletes. If you click through the "3 in 4" link in your linked article, you'll see that the grad rate for many minor sports - e.g., gymnastics, fencing, crew - is high, but the rate for the revenue-producers - football and men's b-ball - is abysmal and lower than the average student graduation rate.
And these stats are averages for students in all of Div I, which includes the Ivy League, the military academies, and many other schools that don't have network-TV-worthy programs. Presumably the graduation rate from the relatively small number of genuinely competitive programs is much lower. The "students" in these programs have been virtually full-time athletes since the age of 12, and their college experience is full-time conditioning, practice, playing, and travel. They are nothing like ordinary Div I athletes. The ordinary Div I athlete, I suspect, is only slightly less accomplished academically than the average non-athlete, and significantly more disciplined and goal-oriented. There's no reason to think that the ordinary Div I athlete needs any special help to graduate.
Your linked article uses stats about "student athletes" as if all such athletes were NCAA B-Ball championship players. You can't do that.
This NYT article about athletes at the University of Michigan might be salient...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/sports/ncaafootball/17michigan.html?_r=1&ref=education&oref=slogin
"The Ann Arbor News reported on Sunday that the psychology professor John Hagen taught at least 294 independent studies from the fall of 2004 to the fall of 2007, 251 of them taken by athletes. Such courses are generally one-on-one classes between the student and the professor for a subject not offered by the university.
"In the report, three former athletic department employees said Hagen’s independent studies were sometimes used to improve the grade point averages of athletes who were at risk of becoming academically ineligible.
"The average grade for 21 athletes who took 32 graded courses from Hagen, 25 of them independent studies, was 3.62. Those athletes had a grade point average of 2.57 in their other classes, according to transcripts reviewed by the newspaper."
I'm not sure we should apply this model to all students.
Ryan,
It's true that this one particular case of a professor seemingly giving out easy grades probably shouldn't be used an example, but the University of Michigan's athletic program is not very representative or most of the the country's colleges and universities.
It's also good to know that Matt's grammar problems aren't limited to spelling sometimes he writes run-on sentences he should have started a new sentence with "They do a pretty good job..."
Uh, Matt, uh ... I don't know how to break this to you, but Harvard isn't representative of big time college sports.
I wonder, does the NCAA do anything at their member schools to help non-athletes achieve post graduate success? Do they donate funds, help set up tutor systems or participate elsewhere in programs to spread their education related largesse outside the athletic department?
You do know what the first A in NCAA is for, right? Assisting student athletes is their mission. There are all sorts of organizations designed to assist certain subsets of the student population. This isn't anything particularly novel.
Uh, Matt? Are you there? The point is not whether Michigan is representative. The point is that Rotherham's article is based on an error of fact. The "3 in 4" graduation rate that he reports for "student athletes" is NOT the graduation rate for "the student-athletes you just saw competing in the NCAA tournament." Those athletes are as different from the ordinary Div I student athlete as I am from Clarence Darrow.
Rotherham's entire argument is premised on this apples-to-oranges comparison. We don't know the graduation rate for tournament-quality athletes, because he doesn't give it to us. It was his job to do it, and he failed. Instead he gave us an argument based on a transparent sleight-of-hand.
When an argument is based on a misinterpretation of data, willful or not, the only thing to do is to ignore it. For some reason, though, people (including journalists) will acknowledge that the data is wrong and then keep on talking about the conclusion as if it makes sense. It doesn't. Put Rotherham's article in the circular file and forget it.
Stick to politics, Matt. You're wrong there, too, but at least you're not ignorant.
Matt,
You ever hear of courses with unofficial names like Rocks for Jocks and Clapping for Credit?
You're making Malcolm Gladwell sound worldly.
I can tell you that even DIII schools lower their standards for athletes. Through easier majors and "genteman" C's they are graduating people who shouldn't be at college. The solution may be to pressure rich universities to pump $$ into high schools to make sure that everyone who gets accepted to college actually belongs there.
How many 7-footers have you ever heard of who couldn't find some college to play basketball at because they're just too damn dumb? Even Manute Bol played at a Division III college, and he was not only an illiterate herdsman, but his whole clan were illiterate herdsmen.
Everybody except Matt knows that big time athletics corrupts colleges. Athletic departments invest a lot not just in helping jocks cheat and in browbeating professors into passing them, but also in paying off the coeds who get raped and the nerds who get stomped.
"Re Peter's comment: In the UK the ratio of population to universities is about 350K:1; in Germany it's about 250K:1; in the U.S. it's about 110K:1. Do we have too many universities? Probably."
Not saying it counts for all of the discrepancy, but the US has a ton of foreign students attending its universities. It makes sense that it would need more universities per capita than countries that don't have the same number of non-citizen students.
And ditto the points above. The vast majority of student athletes are in minor, non-spectator sports. I ran cross country and track at a decent DI school (as a 4:25 miler and 15:20 5000m runner, I was by far the slowest on the team and quit after my sophmore year), and with the exception of a couple of foreign ringers, everyone on the team was an excellent student. I've heard the same is true for most minor sports.
Bloix,
College athletics isn't synonymous with basketball and football, and the special attention that athletes receive isn't confined to the big revenue sports (although it may be a lot more substantial in those cases). Track coaches and lacrosse coaches also want their players to stay eligible, and the efforts that colleges make on behalf of all athletes may partially explain why the graduation rate for athletes is higher than for students as a whole.
For what it's worth, by the way, I was a graduate teaching assistant and graduate instructor at a huge university with a big-time athletic program for about 5 years. During that time, I never encountered any pressure to treat athletes differently, and I can't recall hearing any second-hand accounts of such pressure.
I'm not denying the problem - I'm sure it's at least somewhat widespread, and that the most egregious and publicized examples (Dexter Manley, etc.) are symptoms of a broader trend. At the same time, I wouldn't make any assumptions about the true extent of the problem without hard data. And I also wouldn't automatically assume that dishonest preferential treatment has a large impact on the overall graduation rate for all student athletes, in all sports and at all levels.
Beyond the outright cheating (which certainly does occur) and the graduate students paid to more or less do their homework, scholarship athletes have other advantages that are not transferable to other students.
I also worked for a time as a tutor for athletes at a division 1 school. I never did anyone's homework (though this would have been worlds easier than trying to get them to actually understand the material), but there were clearly athletes who expected me to do just that. When I refused, they had themselves reassigned to other tutors.
Most of the athletes I worked with were actually pretty bright. Some, however, were just incredibly unready for college. Most completely lacked the motivation to study or do the work required to actually do well in school.
The additional advantage I speak of above is the fact that most scholarship athletes have full-time handlers who act as a sort of overbearing mom for them at all times. Many of these guys had no idea what their academic schedule was, what their homework was, when their tests were, etc. They had handlers who managed all these pesky details for them, telling them when to wake up, when to go to class, what to study, what classes to sign up for, and, incidentally, when to go to practice.
These kids were not students. They were unpaid professional athletes. To think that any aspect of their lives is transferable to anyone outside of that system is pretty silly.
N- you didn't read what I wrote. The average grad rate for revenue sports is MUCH LOWER than the average grad rate as a whole. The argument that Rotherman was making is that "the student-athletes you just saw competing in the NCAA tournament" graduate at higher rates than ordinary students because they get special treatment. The underlying factual predicate - that revenue-sport athletes graduate at higher rates than ordinary students is false, which kind of undercuts his argument, don't you think?
And the NCAA data that Rotherman links to shows that cross-country/track athletes graduate at a lower rate than ordinary students, which undercuts YOUR point.
If you look at the sport-by-sport data, there's no sign that the additional resources provided to athletes produces higher graduation rates. My explanation would be that certain sports tend to be played by kids from elite backgrounds: lacrosse, tennis, swimming, fencing, water polo, gymnastics, ice hockey. These kids are athletes, sure, but most would have gone to college even if they weren't, and their parents expect them to graduate. Kids in the revenue sports are more likely to be first-in-the-family students and don't really have an expectation of graduation.
So I would think that if you analyzed the data for all student athletes, not just revenue sport kids, you would find that the average student athlete comes from a wealthier and more highly educated family than the average student. That's what we are seeing in the graduation rate differential, not the effects of special treatment.
At least, that's my guess, and it fits the data better than Rotherman's thesis. But he's the journalist, so he can spread whatever nonsense he wants.
Corollary hypothesis:
Assume that the main predictor of success in college is academic performance in high school. Then the more public attention a sport gets, the lower its graduation rate should be. A winning record in a high profile sport (even if non-revenue-producing) brings prestige and alumni donations. Therefore, the school should be more willing to admit a student in that sport than in a sport with a lower profile.
Thought experiment: two athletes, with equally substandard academic credentials, both high school champions, apply to State U. One is a pitcher. One is a fencer. Which one is likely to get in?
The pitcher, right? Because winning baseball games matters. In fencing, you can reject the kid and take a kid with better grades, because who cares if you win your league's fencing championship?
"You're making Malcolm Gladwell sound worldly.
Posted by Steve Sailer | April 11, 2008 11:53 AM"
Wow, I wonder why a hick racist like Sailer doesn't like a Cuban guy and a black guy.
Another thing needed to be discussed is for those who graduate, which majors? Are they really going to help people from disadvantaged background who are not athletes?
The student athletes that are recruited for revenue sports are usual tracked into majors that are much easier to graduate from than, say Chemical Engineering. And some of those majors don't have much value in the job market. If they ended up in professional sports, that doesn't matter. If they can count on boosters to give them jobs after graduation, that doesn't matter. If they can leverage their sport fame to get job, they would also be OK. And the athletic experiences do really help those "human Physiology/Kinesiology" majors land job as P.E. teachers or personal trainers, working their way up the coaching ranks, etc.
So if universities provide same supports network they provide to students athletes to non-athletes disadvantaged students, get them to graduate with a degree in "human physiology," which seems to be a popular major among student athletes. Are those non-athletes' economic prospect really improved.
Presumably disadvantaged students who are not athletes get in on academic merit. Every university I have attended or worked at had a learning and writing center for kids having trouble. Those who get in from bad backgrounds but are smart thus have the same resources available as those who get in and are from privileged backgrounds. Athletes exist outside this system and cannot be compared to other disadvantaged kids because normally they did not make the grade in the first place, but have been selected for their other contributions. So what in the hell are you comparing here? Should we give kids who already have earned a break on admissions but contribute nothing in return (either through playing sports or work study)a further assistance. While we are at it lets just give them all A's anyway. Of course, this is something matt would know well. At elite universities like his own 96% graduate with honors.
and yet schools actually know how to give people the help they need to stay in school they do a pretty good job with their athletes and what's needed is to extend the same kind of support to everyone
I remember having a journalism class with the starting center on the University's basketball team.
He couldn't read. Really. Not a word. Couldn't write either. Didn't know how to use a computer. Never submitted an assignment. Skipped the few exams that were given. He wasn't out of town for those exams. I had another class with a point guard the same semester (the point guard, unlike the center, was witty and intelligent). He was never missing on the days in question. The point guard is the one who told me the center couldn't read and had no interest in learning to do so.
I read somewhere that the center eventually graduated with a journalism degree. Despite not being able to read.
NCAA football and basketball are big revenue generators for Universities, particularly for very large ones with nationally competitive athletics. Contrary to the USAtoday link, when confronted with a notably non-academic student athelete, athletics departments try to find professors who will simply give passing grades regardless of actual academic performance. They do so because not doing so costs the University money.
Emulating that strategy with all people from "disadvantaged backgrounds?" I can't think of any more counter-productive suggestion for higher education and, more importantly, for the future job prospects of legitimate graduates from "disadvantaged backgrounds" than to flood the market with illegitimate graduates from "disadvantaged backgrounds." To affect such a strategy would make hiring directors suspicious of the authenticity of a university education based on nothing more than race. Many more hardworking, intelligent, authentically qualified people would be lost in the ensuing shuffle than presently are.
Put succinctly, people like the point guard would have a hard time finding a professional job because this strategy would create too many people like the center, who can't read a "Stop" sign but has the same skin color and looks the same as the point guard on a resume.
Comments closed April 25, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
So everyone should have an honor student doing their homework for them?
Posted by BubbaRay | April 11, 2008 9:02 AM