Chapter 4 Athletics and Academics

As discussed in Chapter 1, once a student-athlete like Jennifer is admitted to college she must continue to meet minimum GPA and credit hour requirements in order to maintain her eligibility (the 40/60/80 rule). If she is eligible to play but chooses to sit out a year (“red shirt”), she can use that year of eligibility during her fifth year of college. With only a few exceptions, NCAA rules do not allow students to participate after their fifth year, even if they have not used all four years of eligibility.

To keep student-athletes eligible, universities invest considerable resources in academic support services. Duderstadt (2000, p. 199) noted that at Michigan “the Student Athlete Support Program consists of a director, six full-time advisors, three assistant advisors, seventy tutors, ten specialized writing instructors, and fifteen proctors for supervised study sessions.”⁷

What are some other ways athletic departments keep their athletes eligible? First, they encourage students to take easy majors with little or no requirements other than occasionally going to class and periodically taking a multiple-choice exam. Second, regardless of the student’s major, every college campus has its share of professors who are known for having relatively undemanding course requirements or who are predisposed to athletes to begin with. You probably have a class like “Introduction to Gum Chewing” on your campus, or classes taught by a Professor who favors athletes.⁸ Third, athletes may resort to academic dishonesty; for example, they may have another person write a research paper for them.

A classic case involving such activity occurred at the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota. In spring 1999 allegations of academic fraud at the university surfaced in a local newspaper. The NCAA opened an extensive investigation surrounding the Golden Gophers basketball program. Numerous violations of NCAA regulations were found including, among others, academic fraud, unethical conduct, provision of extra benefits, violation of eligibility requirements, and lack of institutional control. The academic fraud involved a department secretary writing an estimated 400 papers for members of the men’s basketball team between 1993 and 1998, with the approval of the men’s basketball coach. There was also evidence that the athletics department pressured faculty members to change grades. The secretary, an academic counselor, and the coach were dismissed. The NCAA placed the university on probation for four years, reduced the number of scholarships for basketball players, reduced recruiting activity, and required the university to return revenues received from participation in the NCAA tournament in 1994, 1995, and 1997. It also forced the university to erase all references in university publications to its participation in those tournaments as well as the 1996 and 1998 NIT tournaments. Further investigation by the university’s administration led to the removal of the athletics director, the assistant athletics director, the director of NCAA compliance, and the vice president of student affairs and athletics. The president of the university was recently quoted as saying, “the program was corrupt in almost any way you can look at it” (Dohrmann & Borger, 1999).
Fast fact. An article in Sports Illustrated by Rick Reilly (1998) focused on the story of Ohio State’s All-American linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer. In the summer prior to his junior year, Katzenmoyer’s academic eligibility was in jeopardy. By fall he regained eligibility thanks to summer session classes he completed and a grade change for a course he took in the spring. The summer courses were AIDS Awareness, Golf, and Music which he passed. He also failed a spring Art class, The Computer and the Visual Arts, but his grade was later changed to a C+. Katzenmoyer, left Ohio State after his junior year to enter the NFL draft.⁹
4.5 Transfers

The rules for transfer students were introduced in Chapter 1. NCAA Bylaw 14.5.1 states “a student who transfers … is required to complete one full academic year of residence [at the university] before being eligible.” Jennifer may transfer from USC to Notre Dame if she wishes but she will lose a year of sports eligibility. In addition, transfer students cannot receive an athletic scholarship during the first year at the new school unless they are given permission to transfer from their original school.

Because a transfer often involves having to meet different academic requirements, the NCAA discourages transfers because it may impede satisfactory academic progress. As discussed in Chapter 2, the rule is also in place to discourage universities from “pirating” student-athletes from other institutions. By imposing costs on the students who transfer, the NCAA makes it more difficult for schools to convince them to switch. Left to themselves, NCAA member institutions would actively recruit students from other institutions and expend resources in the process. Transfer rules are thus yet another example of a deterrent to cheating that reinforces the monopsonistic cartel powers of the NCAA.

Regulating transfers of student-athletes among NCAA institutions raises important questions about fairness. As an example, suppose a student-athlete named Joe Cool is recruited by Oregon State University Coach Dennis Erickson to play football in 2001. Joe is looking forward to playing for someone with Coach Erickson’s experience (he was formerly head coach of the University of Miami and the Seattle Seahawks). At the end of Joe’s second year of eligibility, Coach Erickson announces that he is leaving Oregon State to coach the San Francisco 49ers. Joe is disheartened by Erickson’s decision and decides to transfer to the University of Utah even though he realizes that he will lose a year of eligibility. Does Coach Erickson suffer a similar penalty? Not at all, he gets a $2.5 million contract and the opportunity to coach one of the NFL’s premier franchises.¹⁰ Does this outcome seem equitable to you? What if Joe was an accounting student, not an athlete, and he decided to transfer from Oregon State to Utah. Would he be required to “sit out” from his accounting classes for a year at Utah? Of course not! Would Chef Suzy be required to sit out a year if she quit the Cheesecake Factory to work for the Olive Garden?¹¹ Would Derek Jeter have to sit out a season if the New York Yankees traded him to the Boston Red Sox? Why are college athletes treated differently?

One widely used measure of educational performance in the intercollegiate athletics community is the graduation rate. While no institution graduates a hundred percent of its eligible students in any academic year, higher rates are preferable to lower ones. Low rates generate criticism that universities are interested only in the athletic achievement of student-athletes and not whether that person ever earns a degree.

To measure the graduation rate, you must first define the relevant group of students, or cohort. The NCAA typically uses one- and four-year cohorts. For example, the tables below show the graduation rates for students that entered college in 1999-2000 and those that entered in the four years from 1996-97 through 1999-2000. One advantages of using a four-class cohort is that it is less susceptible to outliers. One particularly good or bad year will be averaged with the three other years. The other benefit has to do with federal privacy laws. If there were only three students in a particular group of interest (Hispanic female basketball players), data for the group could be used to make inferences about individual students, and thus could not be released. The four-class sample is more likely to have enough students to avoid this problem. The privacy issue will be discussed in more detail below.

A second issue is the number of years after students enter college to see if they have graduated. Many of those that graduate do so in four years, but given that students may change majors, transfer schools, take a year off to work, or go to school part time, it is reasonable to add a couple more years. The most common measures of graduation rates are based on a six-year period of time. If a longer time period is used, then graduates who take longer than six years will be included, but the data cannot be collected and reported for an additional amount of time.

In 1984, when the NCAA first began collecting graduation rate information, the proportion of all students who graduated from college was 53%, while the rate for all athletes was almost identical (52%). More recently, for students who entered a Division I college or university in the 1999-2000 academic year, athletes had a slightly higher graduation rate than non-athletes (63% to 61%). Football and male basketball players had graduation rates of 54% and 46% respectively, lower than the rate for all students but up from 47% and 38% for the 1984-85 academic year. While these numbers seem encouraging, a closer review shows problems still exist. Table 4.2 lists graduation rates for selected Division-I institutions that participated in the 2004 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball championships. Only 32% of the participating men’s teams had graduation rates above 50%. The women fared much better at 84%.
Table 4.2 Six-Year Graduation Rates for 2004 Men’s and Women’s Basketball NCAA

Tournament Teams, 4-class freshman cohort

1. Stanford 100% 1. Colgate 100%

2. Lehigh 90% 2. Stanford 93%

3. Dayton 82% 3. Montana 92%

4. Kansas 73% 4. Vanderbilt 92%

5. Manhattan 69% 5. Texas 88%

6. Duke 67% 6. Duke 87%

7. Richmond 67% 7. Texas Tech 86%

8. Xavier 67% 8. Notre Dame 85%

9. Mississippi State 64% 9. Villanova 85%

10. Vanderbilt 62% 10. Virginia Tech 85%

11. Monmouth 57% 11. Lipscomb 83%

12. Texas-San Antonio 57% 12. Marist College 83%

13. Michigan State 56% 13. North Carolina-Chapel Hill 83%

14. North Carolina-Chapel Hill 55% 14. Louisiana State 82%

15. Vermont 55% 15. Baylor 80%

16. Brigham Young 50% 16. Texas Christian 79%

17. East Tennessee State 50% 17. Temple 78%

18. Gonzaga 50% 18. California-Santa Barbara 77%

19. Valparaiso 50% 19. Minnesota 77%

20. South Carolina 47% 20. Missouri 77%

44. Institution 13 29% 43. Middle Tennessee State 62%

45. Institution 14 29% 44. Oklahoma 60%

46. Connecticut 27% 45. Marquette 59%

47. Georgia Tech 27% 46. Michigan State 57%

48. Maryland 27% 47. Florida 53%

49. Utah 25% 48. Liberty 53%

50. Institution 12 25% 49. Miami (Fla.) 53%

51. Arizona 23% 50. Tennessee-Chattanooga 53%

52. Institution 11 22% 51. Valparaiso 53%

53. Institution 10 20% 52. Colorado 50%

54. Institution 9 18% 53. Louisiana Tech 47%

55. Eastern Washington 14% 54. Eastern Michigan 44%

56. Institution 8 11% 55. California-Los Angeles 43%

57. Institution 6 10% 56. Purdue 43%

58. Institution 7 10% 57. Rutgers 43%

59. Institution 5 8% 58. Ohio State 42%

60. Institution 1 0% 59. Auburn 38%

61. Institution 2 0% 60. Southwest Missouri State 36%

62. Institution 3 0% 61. Houston 32%

63. Institution 4 0% 62. Southern 32%
As you can see from this data, some institutions — Stanford (for both the men and women); Colgate, Montana and Vanderbilt (for the women); and Lehigh, Dayton, and Kansas (for the men) — reported rates above 90%. But many others performed poorly, including Arizona, Connecticut, Eastern Washington, Georgia Tech, and Maryland (Connecticut and Georgia Tech played in the 2004 men’s championship game). Eight other schools had rates even lower than Eastern Washington’s 14%, but they cannot be identified with their rate due to privacy restrictions related to small sample sizes. There are sixteen schools listed in the report only as Institution 1, etc.. They are Alabama-Tuscaloosa, Alabama-Birmingham, Alabama State, Cincinnati, DePaul, Illinois-Chicago, Kentucky, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisville, Memphis, Murray State, Nevada, Oklahoma State, Pittsburgh, Southern Illinois, and Virginia Commonwealth.

We mentioned that the graduation rates for the women’s teams participating in the 2004 tournament are significantly higher than the men’s rates (even the worst, the University of Houston, had a rate higher than 21 of the men’s teams). With rates varying considerably by gender, and possibly other groups, aggregated numbers do not tell the whole story. Let us take a closer look at graduation rates by gender, race, athletic participation and sport for all the NCAA Division I institutions as well as a specific school, the University of Connecticut.

Table 4.3 presents NCAA-compiled graduation data from 327 DI schools. Using the cohort that entered college in the 1999-2000 academic year, student-athletes have a higher rate than all students. Women have a higher rate than men among all students and among athletes. The data also vary by racial and ethnic characteristics. White females and males have the highest rates among athletes, while Black and Hispanic men have the lowest. But again, in all cases the women outperform the men. If we examine the data by sport, for men the rate is higher for football than basketball and baseball. Women’s track and field athletes graduate at a higher rate than for basketball. Unfortunately, we cannot reach any conclusions regarding other sports because the NCAA currently combines sports like tennis, soccer, golf, and swimming in an “other” category for each gender.
Table 4.3 Freshmen-cohort graduation rates at Division I institutions (percentage)
Men Women Total

99-00 4-Class 99-00 4-Class 99-00 4-Class

All students 58 57 64 63 61 60

Am. Indian 44 41 48 46 46 44

Asian/PI 66 64 72 71 69 68

Black 37 36 50 47 44 43

Hispanic 49 47 59 56 54 52

White 61 60 66 65 63 63

N-R Alien 61 60 64 63 63 61

Other 59 58 66 63 63 61
Student-athletes 56 56 71 71 63 62

Am. Indian 58 45 61 62 60 54

Asian/PI 56 55 71 72 64 64

Black 48 48 66 64 53 53

Hispanic 49 48 68 65 58 56

White 60 60 74 73 67 66

N-R Alien 61 59 63 64 62 62

Other 58 51 63 65 61 57

X-country/Track 61 60 69 68

Baseball 47 46 NA NA

Football 54 55 NA NA

Other 64 63 73 73
Source: NCAA (http://www.ncaa.org/grad_rates/)
You can also look at graduation rates for a specific institution. We chose the University of Connecticut (Table 4.4). Because of the relatively small number of athletes in each entering class, it is more appropriate to make comparisons using the full 4-class cohorts. At UConn, student-athletes are much less likely to graduate than their peers, even though the female athletes’ graduation rate is close to that of all students. As you can see, it is the male athletes who are the under-performers; they have a rate fourteen percentage points below male non-athletes. The lowest rates for the men come from baseball (41%) and basketball (18%). Women basketball players graduate at approximately the same rate as the aggregate of all UConn students, although the cohort entering in 1999-2000 has a much lower rate than the four year average (0% vs. 69%).
Table 4.4 Graduation rates at the University of Connecticut
Men Women Total

99-00 4-Class 99-00 4-Class 99-00 4-Class

All students 68 66 75 74 72 71

Am. Indian ** 50 ** 63 ** 55

Asian/PI 63 65 79 78 71 72

Black 44 53 71 72 57 63

Hispanic 70 63 72 68 71 66

White 69 67 76 75 73 71

N-R Alien 55 61 67 53 59 58

Other ** 67 ** 74 ** 71
Student-athletes 59 52 73 76 66 64

Am. Indian ** ** **

Asian/PI ** ** ** ** ** **

Black 58 48 50 71 56 53

Hispanic ** ** ** ** ** **

White 68 57 78 78 74 69

N-R Alien 57 67 43 67 50

Other 59 52 73 76 66 64

X-country/Track 75 68 43 75

Baseball 57 41 NA NA

Football 63 55 NA NA

Other 75 61 84 76
Source: NCAA (http://www.ncaa.org/grad_rates/)
The method used to calculate graduation rates for student-athletes was not developed by the NCAA, but was put in place by the federal government after the passage of the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act in 1990. The NCAA believes that this methodology is flawed, for several reasons. First, only student-athletes receiving scholarships are included in the calculation. If you play a sport but do not get financial assistance (you are a “walk-on”), you are not included in the sample of athletes. You are also omitted if you are a walk-on who later got a grant-in-aid, something that is quite common for athletes competing in equivalency sports like tennis and track and field. At some DI-A schools the difference between the total number of athletes who play but are not getting financial aid is considerable. For example, in 2001-02, at Wisconsin 44 percent of the 723 athletes were walk-ons. That meant that Wisconsin’s student-athlete graduation rate was determined based on the academic performance of only 56% of its athletes (Ferris, Finster, McDonald, 2004). At other institutions, e.g., DI-AAA or DII, the difference may be even larger (at DIII no athletics aid is awarded at all so the NCAA does not collect graduation rates for these schools).

Second, the graduation rate may be inaccurate because transfers and early entrants are not included. This is a serious problem; according to recent research, about 20% of all students earn their baccalaureate at a different institution than where they started their education (Burd, 2004). If these excluded students were more likely to graduate on schedule than the other athletes, their institution’s graduation rate will be biased downwards. If they were less likely to graduate than their peers, the rate will be inflated. Whether transfers should or should not be included in graduation rate calculations depends on the purpose for disclosing graduation rate information. If the information is mainly used by high-school students and their families to help them decide where to attend college, then the omission of transfers is irrelevant.

Student-athletes who leave school early but are on track to graduate, like basketball player Michael Dunleavy Jr. of Duke, are also not included which makes the rate look worse than it should. Conversely, a student who leaves early but would not graduate is not counted against the school.¹²

FERPA has lead to controversy and legal action. For example, when college students were downloading music from the Internet via campus computers, the recording industry wanted colleges to provide the names of students who were pirating songs without paying for them. These schools tried to use FERPA to prevent such disclosure. Its relevance to college sports is that it allows a school to limit disclosure about athletes’ educational progress while they are enrolled (and even after they graduate).

Why does FERPA keep the average graduation data for some groups of students secret? As mentioned above, one issue is the size of the data sample. Schools argue that in situations in which a small number of athletes are provided financial aid, or there are a small number in the sport (especially when you break students out by race), it might be possible to figure out which graduation rates apply to specific students. As an example, it is not illegal to disclose that the graduation rate for all African-American women athletes at USC is 69%. But what if the USC women’s soccer team has 20 players and only 2 of them — Tonya and Vanessa — are African-American? If the graduation rate for the women’s soccer team is broken down by ethnic and/or racial characteristics, it might be easy to figure out if Tonya and Vanessa graduated or not. If you were in their shoes, would you want that information made public without your prior approval? Fortunately for them, FERPA does not allow this to happen.

But some observers have pointed out that NCAA schools are inconsistent in their interpretation of FERPA. For example, schools are quick to publicize the grade point averages of scholar athletes but reluctant to reveal those in academic difficulty. Is GPA information public or private or is it only public when it suits the purposes of the institution?

But we must also keep in mind that the current method of calculating the rate may be misleading. FERPA regulations make it difficult to determine the true value and accuracy of rates. We should also interject the following question: what does a high graduation rate really tell us? Does it suggest that ample resources are made available to help students succeed? Or does it suggest that the academic requirements are so easy that virtually anyone with a pulse and a room temperature IQ can graduate?

In addition, the NCAA recently introduced a series of what appear to be rather draconian reforms that will tie graduation rates to the number of scholarships a school can offer and determine if it can participate in post-season competition. The new rule, called the Academic Progress Rate, establishes a benchmark measurement that encompasses both a modified graduation rate (which will supposedly takes into account transfers and early entrants to the pros) and the academic progress and eligibility of athletes. As of fall 2006, schools that fall below the benchmark for the current academic year may lose scholarships. “Repeat offenders” — institutions that fail to improve over time — could lose scholarships, recruiting visits, and opportunities to participate in post-season competition as early as 2007 (Suggs, 2004, A42-A43). We discuss this reform in greater detail in Chapter 9.

Now we return to one of the central themes of your textbook — do NCAA policy changes represent substantive improvements or merely window-dressing? How will NCAA member institutions react to these rules changes? Imagine that you are the Athletic Director at a Division I institution. Currently, your graduation rate does not meet the minimum threshold established by the NCAA. What actions will you take to increase graduation? One set of possibilities includes increased monitoring of student performance. You can contact each athlete’s professors on a routine basis to make sure the student is attending class regularly and completing all course requirements. You can also enforce study hall and hire tutors. But there is another alternative: encourage students to take easier courses or courses from professors known to play favorites with athletes.
Fast fact. Sportswriter Michael Wilbon (2002) asks "Do we really want to suggest that the state institutions of Arkansas or Maryland or Ohio have the same educational mission as private schools such as Duke or Vanderbilt or Northwestern? I'd hope not. You know what chance there was that Grant Hill wouldn't graduate from Duke? Zero. It was an open layup he'd graduate. Calvin and Janet Hill guaranteed that with the environment they established for their son, and the example of their own educational achievement. Yale and Wellesley, that's where Grant's father and mother went to school. College wasn't just expected of Grant Hill; it was mandatory, automatic, the minimum required. Compare that with most Division I football and basketball players. Way more often than most folks know, the kids playing in the tournament we've been watching all month are the first members of their family to set foot on a college campus. There's no clue whatsoever about the climb ahead, little preparedness, little in the way of pertinent advice. ... State universities in particular have an obligation, given the constituencies they serve, to do everything possible to help those kids grow and prepare to meet life's challenges. I wonder how far some of those kids who didn't graduate from Arkansas had to go just to get to the starting line. Does a degree adequately measure the value of the college experience in their lives? ... (Schools) can be more creative and vigilant in helping students work toward a degree. No question most of these kids have to be worked with more tenaciously because many weren't adequately prepared in high school. But the last thing I'd want to see is so much emphasis put on graduation rates that kids are processed with little regard to the sheer experience of college. That just allows a school to show off self-serving and flawed statistics, hollow numbers that don't tell us very much at all what some of these kids gain from attending college and what schools and the culture at large gain from trying to educate them.