william hubbard - capstone final paper - 12.8.15

Colleges are Failing In Their Duty to Educate Athletes 1

The Academic Performance of College Athletes:

Colleges are Failing in Their Duty to Educate Athletes

William “Drew” Hubbard

Sports Industry Management Program

Georgetown University

(919) 475-5345

December 8, 2015


Table of Contents

Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………….3

I. Introduction……………………………….…………………………….……………..3

II. Background/Literature Review…….………………….…………………………........4 III. Thesis Statement………..….……………………………….........................................7 IV. Graduation Rates………………………………………………………………………7

V. Racial Disparities………………………………………………………………...……9 VI. Clustering…………………………………………………………………………….10

VII. Cheating to Protect Eligibility……………………………………………………….12 VIII. Are Student-Athletes Even Students At All?...............................................................14 IX. Can All Division 1 Athletes Do College-Level Work?...............................................15

X. Do Division 1 Football and Basketball Players Even Want An Education?...............16 XI. What to do?................................................................................................................. 18

Financial Considerations…………………………………………………………………………23

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………….....24

References .......………………………………………………………………………………......26

Appendices……………………………………………………………………………………….30


Executive Summary

The major revenue-producing college sports – football and men’s basketball – have

become significant sources of income for colleges and universities as well as an integral part of

American sports culture. Critics, however, point to a number of metrics – including poor

graduation rates, cheating scandals, and failure to support poorly prepared recruits – to

demonstrate that the National Collegiate Athletic Association and its member schools are failing

in their fundamental goal as institutions intended to foster education – in particular in Football

Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Division I men’s basketball. Thus, many public leaders believe

that the NCAA and its members should do much more to ensure that their student-athletes

receive a valid college education. Indeed, one could argue that colleges have a moral duty to

ensure that their athletes, who are often lured to the institution through a recruitment process,

receive a college education (or at least a more realistic opportunity to do so). This paper will

explore that contention and offer suggestions for solutions that can be realistically accomplished.

I. Introduction: The Business of Division I Football and Men’s Basketball

That modern college football and basketball is big business today is clearly not news.

The growth in popularity and spending on big-time college sports has been remarkable over the

past 30 or so years, as football has eclipsed baseball as “America’s game,” at least in terms of

numbers of fans, television viewers, and revenue (for both professional and college football).

Median revenue by Football Bowl Subdivision colleges has doubled in the past decade, and

today stands at over $62 million dollars (Revenues and Expenses, p 2). Even that number,

however, is overshadowed by the revenue of the more successful football schools. For example,

the Universities of Alabama, Texas, Michigan and Oklahoma, among others, reported revenue in

2014 of well over $100 million for their football programs. Division I men’s basketball


programs have impressive revenue streams as well, with median revenue of almost $7 million

and with the top schools, such as Louisville, Kentucky, Kansas, Duke and North Carolina, all

realizing tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Perhaps more important than the actual

dollar amounts, however, is the significance of football and basketball to those schools’ ability to

fund their athletics program. Indeed, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association

(NCAA), revenue of football and men’s basketball at Division I colleges comprise, on average,

82% of the total revenue generated by sports programs at those institutions (Revenues and

Expenses, p 3).

The NCAA also notes that athletic department expenses at most schools are increasing

more rapidly than revenues, and that total athletic expenses exceeded total revenue at all but 20

Division 1 universities in 2014 (Revenues and Expenses, p. 3). Moreover, as has often been

pointed out, the revenue generated by football and men’s basketball is expected by most college

administrators to pay for the expenses of other athletic teams, virtually all of which lose money.

Thus, the pressure on athletic directors, coaches and college presidents to succeed on the playing

field or court is not founded just on institutional pride or a need to satisfy alumni, but rather by

economic imperatives.

II. Background and Literature Review

The pursuit of excellence in sports competition by colleges and universities has become the

marker by which athletic departments are considered to be “successful.” Won-loss records are

critical, post-season play highly sought after, and the financial rewards of football bowl games

and basketball “March Madness” considered vital to the bottom line accounting budget for those

departments. Nonetheless, if colleges are supposed to be first and foremost educational

institutions, what is the role of educational attainment in judging the success of the modern


“student-athlete?” It is the view of many academics, journalist and public officials that the

answer is a disconcerting one -- that assuring a player is prepared to play is more important than

preparing a player for the day that he is no longer is an elite athlete. Below is an overview of the

principal conclusions reached by those critics in support of that proposition:

The NCAA’s two measures of success for college athletes, the Graduation Success Rate and

the Academic Progress Rate, are “manufactured,” according to the President of the National

Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics (Palaima, 2011).

“Analysis of NCAA Division I football players’ graduation rates reveals that,

overwhelmingly, these athletes do not graduate at rates comparable to other full-time

students at their universities” (Graduation Gap Report, 2015).

“Student athletes tend to take easier classes and get lower grades than non-athletes.” (Time)

“Athletes are routinely clustered into majors that don't set them up to succeed later in life,

mainly because those majors are easy enough for athletes to focus on their sport.” (Trahan)

“Schools recruit athletes (and then offer them admission) who possess inadequate skills to

manage college academics” (Gurney, 2011).

“College graduation doesn’t mean success later in life – just because we graduate somebody

does not mean that they have been given an opportunity for an education equal to that of a

regular student. If we just want to get players into some major to keep them eligible, we're

not necessarily putting them in a degree that's going to really position them to be competitive

in the marketplace" (Steinbach, 2011).

“Nearly $179 million of [the March Madness] payout — 44 percent of the total — went to

teams that were not on track to graduate at least half of their players” (Duncan, 2011).


Many student-athletes have no interest in getting an education – “Why should we have to go

to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play SCHOOL, classes are

POINTLESS” – tweet by Cardale Jones, Ohio State quarterback, October 2012 (Ward,

2014).

Student-athletes are so pushed by their sports obligations that cheating is often their only way

to remain eligible to play – “They tell me everybody does it” (a tutor for college athletes)

(Deford, 2010).

Each of these concerns suggest a problem that should be addressed, and together they

comprise a virtual indictment of the modern collegiate sports scene, at least in the case of FBS

football and men’s basketball. The documentation for these concerns is both broad and deep.

While published books on the subject become rapidly out of date, given the importance of data

surrounding the current milieu in college sports, two recent extensive examinations of academic

failures at the University of North Carolina have been published in book form and provide

valuable insights. The richest data sources, though, are in the form of scholarly reports,

investigations and private sector analyses, for example:

In recent years, the NCAA has required the reporting by its members on their success in

moving student-athletes toward a degree,

Several private sports research organization, associated with universities, have done

extensive analysis and interpretations of NCAA data as well as independently collected data.

These include the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, the College Sports Research

Institute, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in

Education.


The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a national commission of educational

leaders that has for several years been a guiding light for improvements in sports in higher

education.

Numerous examinations by investigative journalists at Time Magazine, Sports Illustrated,

CNN, the New York Times, Sporting News, USA Today, and many other national and local

newspaper and magazines.

Inquiries by the Congress of the United States into the current state of college athletics.

These data sources were complemented for this paper by interviews with an NCAA official,

former college athletes and athletic department employees.

III. Thesis Statement

Many sports and educational leaders believe that the NCAA and its member institutions

should do much more to ensure that their student-athletes receive a valid college education, and

cite the extensive data collected in recent years as evidence that colleges are not doing so.

Indeed, one can argue that colleges have a moral duty to ensure that their athletes – who often

are lured to the institution through a recruitment process – receive an education (or at least a

more realistic opportunity to do so). Some schools are leading the way in such an endeavor and

provide the higher education system with achievable concepts that will restore their standing as

educators as well as better serve the student-athletes who labor for them.

IV. Graduation Rates

The rate at which college athletes graduate with a degree in comparison with other

students is promoted by the NCAA as a key indicator of academic success for college sports

programs. In recent years, that Association has adopted rules that are intended to strongly

encourage colleges to move athletes toward completion of a degree. A 2004 requirement


demanded the tracking of an “Academic Progress Rate,” which assesses whether student-athletes

are moving forward academically. A “progress toward degree” rule (known as 40-60-80)

requires student-athletes to achieve certain benchmarks toward a specific degree during their

later years at the institution. And a Graduation Success Rate is calculated by the NCAA to assess

how well college athletes are completing their degree requirements. [A separate Federal

Graduation Rate formula is used by the federal Department of Education, with different criteria,

that generally shows less success in graduating athletes than the NCAA’s formula.] In November

2015, the NCAA announced that the GSR for 2014 for Division 1 college athletes “has climbed

to 86% -- two points over last year and the highest rate ever” (Hosick, 2015). Men’s basketball

players were recorded as having a 77% GSR and FBS football players 75%. That report also

noted that student-athletes were graduating at a higher rate than non-athlete students, using the

different metric of the Federal Graduation Rate. The NCAA has emphasized in its reports that

graduation rates are progressively “on the rise” as shown in an NCAA graphic in Appendix 1.

This record of success is disputed, however. First, as the NCAA acknowledges, the

graduation rate as determined by the Federal government is 20 points lower, although that

discrepancy can be explained by differences in counting students (for example, transfers to other

schools are counted differently). More troubling is an analysis by the independent College Sport

Research Institute, which has developed a graduation rate “gap” analysis that attempts to better

compare the experiences of athletes and ordinary students. Their analysis finds a 20% gap

between the graduation rates of athletes and their non-athlete counterparts. The NCAA

aggregates “all athletes together," [CSRI’s Richard] Southall says, "and the fact of the matter is

that when looking at the demographic profile of tennis and golf and lacrosse and soccer, those

are much more highly qualified students than most football or men's basketball players."


(Steinbach) Moreover, the NCAA analysis includes Ivy League schools, which do not offer

scholarships in football and men’s basketball.

V. Racial Disparities

If the data on overall graduation rate success is disputed, what is not in contention is an

even more troubling statistic – the differences in success between white athletes and their

African-American counterparts. An analysis by the Center for Race and Equity in Education at

the University of Pennsylvania has found that “Only 50% of black male student-athletes graduate

within six years from universities in the seven major NCAA Division I sports conferences,

compared to 67% of student-athletes overall, 73% of undergraduate students overall, and 56% of

black undergraduate men overall” (Harper, Williams, Blackman, p. 3). The Center also found

that over half of Division 1 football players were black and two-thirds of men’s basketball

players. Nevertheless, almost all the schools (over 97%) graduated black players at rates lower

than the general student population, and two-thirds graduated black players at lower rates than

non-athlete black students. The UPenn Center furthered determined that, of the 10 colleges in

last year’s bowl championship series, only Stanford had a graduation rate for its black players

above 51%. A separate analysis by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the

University of Central Florida found similar results for bowl-bound football teams, as well as a

substantial graduation gap for black men’s basketball players. “ . . .The enormous gap between

the graduation rates of the white and African-American student-athletes in 2015 remained the

same as 2014, at a terrible 24 percent,” their most recent report noted (Lapchick, 2014). This

year’s number one ranked school for much of the football season, Clemson, recently touted its

graduation success rate as determined by the NCAA: “To me that's the true standard. It's nice to

be No. 1 and win games, but that's my true scorecard," said Clemson coach Dabo Sweeney


(ESPN, 2015). But the UPenn Center’s analysis found that only 47% of Clemson’s black football

players graduated within six years of enrolling at the university. Appendix 3 contains a graphic

illustrating the low rates at which all of the participants in last year’s football bowl championship

series graduated their black male athletes.

VI. Clustering

To add to the controversy over graduation rates among student athletes, there is

widespread belief that athletes “cluster” in less challenging majors and take a preponderance of

“easy” courses in college. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviewed the declared majors for players

on the Top 25 football and men's basketball teams, as ranked by The Associated Press, during

the 2013-14 academic year. The review showed that 13 of the 22 top-ranked football teams that

disclose majors and 16 of the 20 basketball teams that disclose majors have athletes clustered in

areas of study. A chart detailing the Post-Gazette’s findings can be found in Appendix 4.

As the Post-Gazette reported, “Jock McKissic, a defensive tackle who played his last

season in 2008, graduated with a degree in sociology and communications. He said he arrived on

campus considering business management but was turned off by the math requirements.

Sociology appealed to him because of its general nature and the welcoming faculty. He noticed

that after he and a couple of other teammates declared sociology as their major, other teammates

in the ensuing classes followed”(Dent, Sanserino, Werner, 2014). Other studies of the

phenomenon have found similar conclusions. (Schneider, Ross, Fisher) Indeed, at some schools

there appear to be well known “eligibility majors,” among the most common being sociology,

psychology, criminal justice and sports management (Infante, 2014). If clustering is an accepted


practice, what harm does it do? Dr. Amanda Paule-Koba, a professor of sport management at

Bowling Green University, believes that it directs students into majors that do not fit their

interest or prepare them for life after college: "It's one thing to get a degree, it's another thing to

be educated"(Dent, Sanserino, Werner, 2014). Moreover, Dr. Paule-Koba believes that recent

NCAA reforms requiring academic progress has actually increased clustering, as athletic

department academic advisors have been pressed to find ways to keep athletes eligible to play.

Beyond the matter of majors, moreover, there is equally substantial evidence that college

athletes gravitate toward the easiest courses. Examples are readily available. At Stanford

University, there was reportedly a “list” of easy classes, including “Social Dances of North

America III,” that were “among dozens of classes on a closely guarded quarterly list distributed

only to Stanford athletes . . .”(Harris & Mac). The New York Times reported on independent

studies course taught by a professor at the University of Michigan that were “used to improve the

grade point averages of athletes who were at risk of becoming academically ineligible” (Evans,

2008). A particularly striking recent example of this activity was Julius Peppers at the University

of North Carolina, who played both football and basketball at UNC, then went on to an all-star

career in the NFL. Peppers’ transcript illustrated his struggles in most of his academic classes,

but when he took a series of courses in African and African-American (AFAM) studies that were

later found to be among the easiest for athletes at UNC, Peppers excelled. As one investigative

journalist noted, UNC academic counselors apparently failed to notice that “players like Peppers

would get F’s in other departments but suddenly turned into an Academic All Americans once

they enrolled in AFAM courses”(Anderson, 2014).

VII. Cheating to Protect Eligibility


While some may conclude that Julius Peppers’ resort to AFAM courses was an example of

an athlete cherry picking easy classes, the situation at UNC proved to be far more problematic

once investigators dug deeper. Indeed, it became another form of “poster child” -- that of

cheating to retain athletic eligibility. With the NCAA requiring that students advance in their

academics to remain eligible to play, cheating has become a particularly troublesome option for

some athletes. In the UNC case, cheating was found to be widespread in several categories,

among which were included:

Pressure from officials on instructors to award specific grades to athletes who needed them to remain eligible

Knowledge by academic counselors that AFAM courses were “grade point average boosters” (Saacks, 2014).

The creation of independent study AFAM classes for which little or no work was required,

but resulting in grades of A or B

UNC’s case is unfortunately not unique. In January 2015, the NCAA announced that it was

investigating 20 colleges and universities, almost all Division I schools, for academic fraud.

Moreover, “last year, the NCAA prosecuted 22 major violations of academic misconduct, the

highest total in three years. It also handled 5,000 more minor, or secondary violations, the most it

has ever recorded”(Willens, 2015). As a former tutor for the UNC athletic department

commented in her account of UNC’s experience as well as similar scandals at other major

universities, “common threads connect the sobering stories from Auburn, Washington,

Minnesota, and UNC (to which could be added other examples from UC-Berkeley, Stanford,

Florida State, Tennessee, Fresno State, Southern Cal, and most recently Notre Dame. At all of

the schools . . . a long-cultivated culture of willful blindness permitted the systematic

degradation of the academic standards on which they based their impressive reputations”(Smith


& Willingham, 2015). Even the mood of superiority that has long characterized Ivy Leagues

schools was diminished in 2012 when Harvard was discovered to have its own cheating scandal:

“last week, days after published reports implicated the co-captains of the basketball team in a

widespread academic cheating scandal that may involve dozens of varsity athletes, the mood at

Harvard had shifted”(Pennington, 2012). Does everybody do it? Listen to noted sports

commentator Frank Deford: “Saddest of all, when some courageous academics have dared blow

the whistle . . . they've all too often been castigated as tattletales. Hey, professor, get on the team.

I'll never forget a tutor from a big-time school literally crying on the phone to me as he confessed

to his part in the corruption of athletics. He felt especially ashamed because it was his alma

mater. ‘They tell me everybody does it,’ he said. ‘Is that really true?’”(Deford, 2010).

VIII. Are Student-Athletes Even Students At All?

Despite the insistence of the NCAA and its member institutions that college football and

basketball players are “student-athletes,” it would be fair to conclude that many college athletes

face a difficult choice between being one or the other. The demands placed on an athletes’ time

by their sports are daunting at best. Take the example of Shakeel Rashad of this year’s UNC Tar

Heels:

“The senior linebacker’s schedule is regimented down to the minute. After [an 8 a.m.

class] he snags breakfast at Kenan Stadium, works on his online class for an hour and

watches film for an hour and 15 minutes before heading to the weight room. From

12:45 to 1:30, he works out, then goes to get taped for practice before the team meetings

start at 2:20 p.m. Several different meetings run until 3:40 p.m. Then he has 25 minutes


to get dressed and head to practice at 4:05 p.m. Around 6:30 p.m. – maybe longer if he

has to do interviews with reporters – he can finally go home to finish

homework…“(Ulrich, 2015).

That kind of schedule is not unusual for a Division 1 football or basketball player, who is

expected during the season to do whatever is necessary to prepare his body and mind for the next

game (and to do extensive unsupervised workouts during the off-season). Even NCAA surveys

show that student-athletes spend more time on their sports than on their academics. How, then,

can a student with such regimented non-academic demands, succeed at the college level? One

successful athlete, Richard Sherman of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks, had an outstanding

academic record at Stanford, but feels sorry for many of his former teammates: “I would love

for a regular student to have a student-athlete’s schedule for just one semester, and show me how

he can get all his work done”(Sherman, 2015). The NCAA attempts to ensure that student-

athletes have sufficient time to do their school work, even during a playing season, but in an

interview with an NCAA executive, he acknowledged that players must make choices about how

to use their time and many do not use it well (Frank, 2015).

IX. Can All Division 1 Athletes Do College-Level Work?

Underlying the academic challenges that many college athletes face is the question of

whether they are prepared for college-level work when admitted. There is substantial evidence

that many are not. A 2014 survey of two-dozen Division 1 colleges by CNN concluded that

many football and basketball players could read only up to the eighth grade level; and “the data

obtained through open records requests also showed a staggering achievement gap between


college athletes and their peers at the same institution”(Ganim, 2014). Critics contend that

colleges have created special exemptions from normal high school grades or standardized test

scores, intended for students with special talents, that have mostly gone to getting athletes

admitted (Zagier, 2009). A review by the Associated Press found that well over half of football

subdivision schools use special waivers to get athletes enrolled, and that “football players and

other athletes at 27 schools were at least 10 times more likely to benefit from such programs than

students in the general population.” Another analysis of public records, by the Atlanta Journal-

Constitution, found significant discrepancies between the SAT scores of athletes and other

students, with football being the biggest outlier. The Journal-Constitution concluded that

“football and men’s basketball players on the nation’s big-time college teams averaged hundreds

of points lower on their SATs than their classmates, and some of the gaps are so large they call

into question the lengths to which schools will go to win”(Knobler, 2008). A professor at the

University of Oklahoma who has extensively studied student-athlete academic achievement puts

it even more bluntly: College presidents have put in jeopardy the academic credibility of their

universities just so we can have this entertainment industry. ... The NCAA continually wants to

ignore this fact, but they are admitting students who cannot read”(Gurney, 2011). He should

know of what he speaks, as one study of the University of Oklahoma found that 10% of OU

athletes in its revenue-producing sports read below a fourth-grade level (Kohn, 2014).

X. Do Division 1 Football and Basketball Players Even Want an Education?

The aspiration of many, many college football and basketball players is to “go pro.” That

expectation is unrealistic, given that fewer than 2% of such players ever make it onto a

professional sports team. For all sports, “there are about 400,000 student athletes nationwide,


and 99.5 percent of them will spend their lives doing something other than playing professional

sports”(Palaima, 2011). Nevertheless, according to one NCAA official interviewed for this

project, over two-thirds of Division 1 football players believe they have prospects of playing

professionally [and about half of Division III football players have such hopes, despite the fact

that very, very few Division III players have ever made it onto a professional team](Frank,

2015). Thus, preparing to play, and conditioning their bodies to play is often their principal

focus. The tweet by Cardale Jones referenced earlier, that going to class was “pointless,”

received particular notice when Jones later led Ohio State to a FBS championship. Another

national championship winner, Rashad McCants of North Carolina’s Final Four winner in 2005,

also received significant notice with similar comments in 2014: “When you get to college, you

don't go to class, you don't do nothing, you just show up and play . . .You're there to make

revenue for the college. You're there to put fans in the seats. You're there to bring prestige to the

university by winning games"(Delsohn, 2014). An extensive investigation by Sports Illustrated at

Oklahoma State found long-lived disregard for academics and a clear emphasis by athletics

officials on performance on the court and on the field. As former Cowboy defensive tackle

noted, “Are you kidding me? I didn't go there to go to school, I went there to play

football"(Sports Illustrated, 2013). Of course, many football and basketball players do care about

doing well in school, getting a degree, and moving on in life after sports. One former college

football player interviewed for this paper noted that he was such a player and that there were

many others like him, but that it was equally clear that a number of his fellow players were there

only to play football and gave little thought to academics other than the need to remain eligible

to play their sport (Wooten, 2014). Exacerbating this attitude is the belief, as mentioned earlier,

among so many players that they don’t need an education, because of their prospect to play


professionally. As NCAA President has said, speaking of basketball players, "athletes often

have incredibly unrealistic perceptions of their professional prospects"(New, 2015).

XI. What To Do?

The Federal government, in the form of Congressional committees and the Obama

Administration, have weighed in with their concerns about the direction being taken by the major

football and basketball collegiate powers. Members of the House of Representatives Committee

on Oversight and Government Reform have pressed the NCAA to explain their position on

academic success by student-athletes, to quote: “Given the huge amounts of money received by

the NCAA and its member institutions, we believe you have a solemn obligation to support the

academic goals of students just as vigorously as their goals on the track, court, or field”

(Cardenas, 2014). Perhaps more impactful, however, has been the exertion of pressure by the

U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, himself a former college and professional basketball

player. Duncan has repeatedly urged the NCAA to take a greater role in assuring a quality

education for student-athletes, and is given much of the credit for pushing the Association to

adopt its academic progress rate requirements. One result was the NCAA ban on the University

of Connecticut from participating in the 2013 NCAA basketball tournament due to deficiencies

in moving its players toward graduation. As Duncan said at the time, “A team that has 13 or

15% of its African-American guys graduate – you’re just using those guys” (Wolfe, 2015).

As noted earlier, the NCAA’s attempts in recent years to compel its member schools to

focus more on their academic standards has met with mixed success. And the NCAA’s

President, Mark Emmert, also contends that his organization must look to the colleges


themselves in the end: Asked whether the NCAA could do anything to ensure athletes were

receiving credible educations, he said the organization could only promote broad goals.

“Whether or not an individual school is providing the kind of quality education or the rigor you

need to be a successful graduate has to be something the university itself pays attention to," Mr.

Emmert said when asked about the NCAA’s role in 2014 (Dent, Sanserino, Werner, 2014).

So, if the NCAA believes it will be up to colleges to address the issues raised in this

paper, what can college administrators do to improve the educational prospects of football and

basketball players? Some critics would force action through enactment of a student-athlete “Bill

of Rights,” or through enactment of legislation such as the Student Athlete Protection Act. That

bill, introduced in Congress with the support of the Drake Group, a consortium of concerned

academic leaders, would require colleges to provide athletes with greater opportunities to

complete their education and more assistance while enrolled in college. Jeffrey Kessler, the

labor lawyer who successful negotiated free agency in the NFL and NBA, has filed a promising

antitrust lawsuit that would seek to have Division 1 football and men’s basketball separated from

their institutions, with those sports placed into more a “business” environment, and athletes paid

to play but also given compensation for taking classes (Eder, 2014).

The more likely path for reform, however, will be through the increasing efforts of individual

universities to adopt initiatives that can lead the way, in the following categories:

1) Better Prepare New Student-Athletes who have Weak Academic Skills – This could

include such efforts as enrolling students for summer remedial work prior to their

freshman year, barring such students from playing their first years (so that they can


concentrate on building an academic base), vigorous tutoring and academic support by

the athletic department as soon as the athlete signs for play for the university, and

teaching recruits time management skills and strategies. Ohio State, for example, is one

of a number of colleges that has a program focused on incoming athletes to transition

them to college life and to academic requirements, which includes minimum time at a

“study table” each week where academics are stressed as an important goal for their next

four years (Moalim, 2014).

2) Great Focus on Academics Throughout an Athletes Career at the University – among the

many valuable changes being made by schools across the country are:

Ensuring that athletic counseling and tutoring services are placed under the

supervision of academic officials (not the athletic department)

Collecting and disseminating academic achievement data specifically for football

and basketball players (no one is worrying about the fencing team)

Making class attendance mandatory for all scholarship athletes for all classes and

limiting the use of “independent studies” classes

Ensuring that athletes complete minimum courses required for life after college,

e.g., English composition and reading, basic math skills


Periodic training of all athletic department officials, including coaches, of the

purpose of the institution and its focus on educating its students, and requiring

those officials to impart that priority to the student-athletes in their care

The use of mentors for academically at-risk athletes to provide them with

practical, emotional and academic support throughout their time at the school

3) Degree Completion Programs – There is convincing evidence that many Division 1

football and basketball players do not take advantage of their opportunity to acquire a

college degree. Colleges should adopt programs analogous to the GI Bill, which provides

financial support to military veterans for college after their service. Such a program

could allocate funds for athletes whose eligibility has expired to return to school or

continue their education, through the provision of financial support (tuition and living

expenses) and access to the academic advising and career counseling available to active

athletes.

The data presented earlier suggests a particular challenge for black athletes, for which

success is clearly more threatened than for their white counterparts. In addition to the

recommendations listed above, the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education

(Harper, Williams and Blackman, pp. 16-19) has suggested a plethora of ideas that can be

focused on African-American players, many of which can be summarized as below:

1) Disaggregate racial data, so that colleges are required to report the academic progress of African-America athletes separately from whites

2) “Racialize” academic progress rate requirements so that colleges who fail to move players

toward degree completion will be penalized by the NCAA (e.g., ban from postseason play)


3) Devote a percentage of revenue from football and men’s basketball toward interventions for black athletes

4) Design intervention programs targeted specifically at black athletes, including tutoring, academic advising, structured study spaces and other efforts that are used for all athletes

5) The addressing by college leaders and coaches of low expectations and stereotypes for black athletes as “dumb jocks”

6) The tracking and encouragement by academic leaders of black athlete performance and

opportunities, e.g., GPA levels, selection of majors, participation in enrichment programs (such as study abroad)

7) Creation of post-college career programs for black athletes that focus on career planning and assistance to graduates in finding employment

The good news is that colleges and universities are rising to the occasion in this regard.

While they recognize that contemporary college sports have become too fundamental to their

institutions to be demoted, they also realize the need to better care for the athletes who provide

so much entertainment and revenue to their schools. Many college leaders are taking significant

steps in that direction. The University of California (Berkeley) has adopted a list of 50 reforms

aimed at improving the academic performance of its athletes. The University of Connecticut has

committed to greatly improve its previous dismal graduation rate of basketball players. The

University of Wisconsin has adopted a “Beyond the Game” program focused on preparing

athletes – especially Black players – for a non-sports career after college. Numerous schools that

have been afflicted with academic-athletic scandals are establishing more rigorous controls. One

of the most far-reaching examples lies at the University of North Carolina, which saw its proud

reputation as a ”public Ivy” greatly diminished by its “fake classes” ignominy. Not only has it

moved to separate its academic support program for athletes from its athletic department, UNC’s

new “Carolina Commitment” initiative adopts all of the concepts suggested above, and more,

with the assurance that procedures are in place to never let such problems occur again. But more


importantly, UNC has committed to extraordinary efforts to keep athletes in school until they

receive a degree, or to encourage them to return to complete their degree in later years. Indeed,

its “Complete Carolina” program offers a full tuition/fees/books/room and board benefit to

former scholarship athletes who return to complete their degree.

Financial Considerations

Without a doubt, colleges who take on new responsibilities for assuring their athletes

receive a valid education will incur costs in doing so. Most of the programs that will need to be

strengthened, however, such as tutoring, academic assistance, remedial courses and the like, are

already part of their current efforts, and will merely need to be better focused (and separated

from the athletic departments). A program to encourage former athletes to return to school and

graduate will require new funding. Those costs, however, should be minor compared to the

revenue a major university receives from its football and men’s basketball programs. For

example, an FBS football team is allowed by the NCAA to have 85 scholarship players per year,

meaning that about 20 will graduate or lose their eligibility in a given year. If fully half of those

players did not graduate and chose to return later to complete their degree, the costs would be

about $170,000 for a public university and $340,000 for a private one (almost all FBS schools

are public). [The Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics calculates

that tuition and expenses for the average public 4-yr college is $17,000, and $34,000 for the

average private 4-yr college.] Add in a couple of basketball players who failed to graduate, and

the costs for a public university would be about $200,000 and about $400,000 for a private

school. If one assumed these costs for all 128 FBS schools, for another example, the total would

be well under $20 million, compared to an annual football revenue of $3.4 billion, therefore


about ½ of 1% of revenue. Calculated yet another way, the annual revenue generated by the

average FBS player is about $310,000; a $17,000 post-eligibility scholarship would require a

contribution of only about 5% of that annual revenue. [Calculated by dividing the $3.4 billion

annual football revenue by the 10,965 scholarship football players permitted under NCAA rules.]

Some might argue that even this modest amount would be problematic for many schools, since

most college athletic departments run a deficit with respect to revenue versus expenses.

Nevertheless, given the enormous revenue generated by these players’ labors, compared to the

relatively trivial costs of offering them a complete education, such an effort would appear to be a

cost-effective way for colleges to carry out their obligations to these student-athletes.

Conclusion

The leaders of those institutions that are moving to ensure a better education for athletes

see a basic responsibility as educators to act. As a professor of culture, gender and race studies

at Washington State noted, “if the chance at a postsecondary degree is what students are

exchanging for their blood, sweat and tears, then there needs to be a culture of accountability

where colleges and universities are encouraging student-athletes to succeed.”(Richmond)

Moreover, the moral imperative should be a major consideration for collegiate leaders in

assessing the quality of their athletic programs. It is simply wrong for institutions that hold

themselves up as helping society progress through learning to ignore their failings in athletics.

Perhaps Education Secretary Duncan said it best: “I grew up playing with guys who never

graduated college, never made the NBA. They were on national TV, making millions for their

universities, and now they’re back on the streets. To me, enriching universities and coaches and


sponsors and TV, with nothing in return on the academic side, is morally unacceptable” (Wolfe,

2015).


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Appendix 3

william hubbard - capstone final paper - 12.8.15

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