College Sports, Race, and Education
Jeff Alworth
Periodically, Kari and I indulge our sports passions with a post on college sports--a proclivity just slightly more tolerable to lefties than supporting Bush's surge. Given that Oregon nabbed a three seed for the forthcoming NCAA basketball tournament, I suppose a post was inevitable. (Not, however, from Kari, whose alma mater was crushed by the Ducks in the Pac 10 Tourney final.) But rather than congratulating the Ducks (and irritating readers), let me offer you a report that came out today and expand the discussion beyond hoops.
Working with admittedly old data (1996-'99), Richard Lapchick, director of the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports, released a report yesterday about the very poor performance of those Ducks on sports graduation rates:
Under the formula of Federal Graduation Rates, no basketball player from NCAA-bound Florida A&M, Eastern Kentucky or Oregon received a degree from those four freshman classes, Lapchick's study said.
Using a different measure, which follows players who transfer to other schools and receive degrees, Oregon's performance rose to 50%. Better, but still not so hot. But the really bad news is the disparity between white and black players:
Lapchick's study said that based on the GSR formula, 68 percent of teams bound for the NCAA men's basketball tournament graduated 70 percent or more of their white players, but just 30 percent graduated 70 percent or more of black players. While 76 percent of white basketball players receive degrees, just 51 percent of black players do.
Universities love sports, believing they bring riches and prestige. It doesn't always work out that way--according to an extensive study by the Indianapolis Star last year, Oregon spent just a hair more than it earned on sports in 2004-2005. Of course, certain "intangibles" are inevitably cited as reasons why athletics pay for themselves. They bring attention to the school, make recruiting faculty easier, and benefit students on campus who get to use state-of-the-art facilities. And, worth noting, none of the money comes from the government, so taxpayers aren't footing the bill.
Let's grant the argument. These are, after all, universities--presumably they've looked into their finances and made educated decisions about the return on their investment. But what about the athletes? For big-time sports schools like Oregon, they become a product the university sells to fans. UO spent $2.6 million to recruit kids for its football and men's basketball teams. What responsibility does it have to graduate these students? Given their enormous value to the university, you'd think they'd have an even greater commitment to their success. What are they spending to ensure their athletes succeed in the classroom?
Then there's the issue of race. Only 1.6% of UO students were black in the fall of 2005, marginally lower than the 1.8% statewide. I have no way of tracking the race of athletes, but it's clear that in men's basketball and football, the percentage is far higher. Again, the university is enormously indebted to these students. They not only sell tickets, but bring needed diversity and different perspectives to an overwhelmingly white campus. The great majority of these athletes will not go on to professional careers. Given the service they provide to the university while they're on campus, is the university responsible to make sure they enter the workforce with more than fond memories and press clippings?
These questions are asked every year during tourney time, so we're not covering new ground. But isn't that the point--why do we have to ask the same questions every year? I'm delighted by Oregon's run in the Pac Ten tournament and their strong position for the NCAAs. But Oregon is a public university, and so it's also good to ask these questions. Again.
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Mar 12, '07
Ducks, so what. Baker High School Bulldogs just won the 4A State Championship, 1st since 1938. One of the stars of the '38 team, who still lives here (of course) was there rooting for his great grandson - a star of this team.
I had nothing to do with it, I was electing DPO officials.
Mar 12, '07
Great post! I am waiting for the flames to come now that the evidence has been unearthed.
From a graduate student's point of view, I first engage in a brutal cost-benefit analysis. I know that the majority of Oregon universities are not Division 1 schools, hence the athletes have a 1 billion in 1 chance of making it to the pros and having a long pro career. Hence, the natural question is why keep a sports program that students and taxpayers subsidize year after year? The answer is equity.
If Portland State, WOU, EOU, SOU and all the other private colleges did not have a sports program they could not recruit a sizeable number of male minority students and could not recruit a sizable number rural caucasian males. It is not about dollars and cents from a cost allocation perspective, it is all about equity.
9:53 p.m.
Mar 12, '07
Working with data from the freshman classes of 1996 to 1999 isn't "working with old data." When you do graduation-rate studies, you work on a six-year timeline (not four).
So, those first-year classes of 1996 to 1999 would have closed their six-year timelines from 2002 to 2005.
Of course, using graduation rates is a HORRIBLE way to study this topic. Mostly because you're a good 6-8 years behind at all times. By the time you figure out that a college has a substandard approach to recruitment and academics, well, that coaching team is likely long gone - and the students definitely are.
That's why the NCAA adopted a new yardstick - the Academic Progress Rate (APR) - in 2005.
The APR tries to evaluate academic progress in real time, and is easy to understand. A score of 1000 is perfect. Teams with scores under 925 lose scholarships when students flunk out. (That's right, it's by sport - so tennis might be held harmless while football gets hammered.)
Starting after the 2006-2007 academic year, they'll start hitting schools with more serious penalties based on a rolling four-year APR average. They can create tougher penalties because you'll be hitting the schools while the bad guys are still in place -- and they'll be able to climb out of the penalties if they improve dramatically in one year.
Mar 12, '07
Here's a partial solution that would go a long way toward mitigating the exploited student-athlete thing by restoring some emphasis on the student part of student athlete:
Pass an NCAA requirement that all member schools owe their student-athletes who fail to obtain a degree in five years a free ride for up to an ADDITIONAL four free years tuition/room/board at any time during the student's life, paid out of the sport's budget but with NO VARSITY involvement.
That is, if a 28-year old swimmer doesn't have a degree, then her school owes her a free year for every year where she competed at the school.
And if 40 would-be NFL footballers didn't graduate and want to return to school after their pro careers (or, more likely, after failing to have a pro career), then the school owes them up to four years to get a degree WITHOUT any sports participation.
This puts the onus on coaches to recruit with an eye to their down-the-road obligations and to manage the demands put on students so as to avoid paying these "free riders" to have a second shot.
It's not ideal--the big $$ sports can afford it, but at least it gets the used-up/injured/exploited athletes a second shot at the college life and an opportunity to earn a meaningful degree.
Mar 13, '07
Given the service they provide to the university while they're on campus,is the university responsible to make sure they enter the workforce with more than fond memories and press clippings
Well, Jeff, that about sums up the problem, doesn't it? We're not talking about some idealistic Kennedy-esque service to one's country or one's university here. We're talking about the university treating these ball players as a commodity, the functional equivalent of Roman gladiators providing entertainment to the masses. We're talking about universities being complicit in a societal scheme that promotes self-deception on the part of a subset of the population--primarily the non-white and the poor. The university is running a lottery scheme, selling "tickets" to desperate young folks who are told over and over, by coaches, peers, and the media, that their chance for "the big time" depends not upon their intellectual talents and efforts but upon how well they throw a ball.
So I'm sorry, when you talk about how the university is somehow responsible for what happens to these de facto semi-pro ball players after they graduate (if they do), you're ducking your own responsibility. You consume the product the university is marketing. There's no product without a willing consumer.
University athletics in the US sense is practically unknown outside the US, where universities are for education of a sort that does not involve balls.
8:35 a.m.
Mar 13, '07
Pass an NCAA requirement that all member schools owe their student-athletes who fail to obtain a degree in five years a free ride for up to an ADDITIONAL four free years tuition/room/board at any time during the student's life, paid out of the sport's budget but with NO VARSITY involvement.
That's a very interesting suggestion. A lot of athletes do arrive woefully unprepared to acquire an academic education and with unrealistic expectations about their sports future. With more experience and maturity some of them might well succeed. I'd love to see this tried. It doesn't cost anything if those eligible don't choose to take advantage of it.
9:12 a.m.
Mar 13, '07
So, those first-year classes of 1996 to 1999 would have closed their six-year timelines from 2002 to 2005.
Quite right. (And your APR link is bad.)
So I'm sorry, when you talk about how the university is somehow responsible for what happens to these de facto semi-pro ball players after they graduate (if they do), you're ducking your own responsibility.
You're right that we all have culpability with regard to the spectacle college sports has become (guilty as charged), but you're wrong that the fans are the ones responsible for the education of the students. If every university performed equally badly on graduating its students, or demonstrated the same disparity on black/white graduation rates, you could make the argument that it was a systemic problem. But schools like Holy Cross and Butler (ironically, private schools) do right by their students.
You wish to make a larger moral point, and one I don't disagree with. But that leads to foot-stamping and inaction--of the variety we watch every year.
JMG's solution is an interesting one, though it might compound the have/have not quality of university athletics by offering further riches to one class of athlete while the other labors without scholarship.
9:19 a.m.
Mar 13, '07
Fixed that link above.
Mar 13, '07
Well about half of the population is below average intelligence so there really isn't too much to worry about when you see numbers showing that some kids can't finish up a college degree.
Even if kids weren't involved in sports programs about 50% of the them couldn't make it thru a college degree program. College is intended to apply to only a certain segment of the population. I don't have the numbers at my fingertips but college might only be a good choice for about 25% of the population.
There is a bell curve on most everything and it is going to be pretty rare when you find people who are in the upper 20% of the curve for both smarts and ball handling skills.
Mar 13, '07
There is a bell curve on most everything and it is going to be pretty rare when you find people who are in the upper 20% of the curve for both smarts and ball handling skills.
So why do we as a society perpetuate this charade through college athlietics and athletic scholarships (aka semi-rofessional contracts), and then pat ourselves on the back about how we're providing the disadvantaged a path to a college education?
I want the state to give scholarships to poor kids. I want some of my taxes to go to that. But I don't want the kids to have to perform in exchange.
Mar 13, '07
Well I guess the number of people who want to watch college sports is greater than the number of people like you who want to give college educations to poor people who can't dunk.
Maybe you should go have a sit in at the Nike headquarters until they stop providing money to to atheletic departments and start giving money to poor kids. I assume you mean poor kids who are actually smart enough to learn college level material to since it doesn't make any sense to send the dumb ones there. Then they would be taking the place of smarter kids who could better use the education.
BTW - I looked up the numbers on the census website and it shows that 85% of the USA has HS education and 28% have a college degree. So that seems about correct when you look at the bell curve for IQ distribution.
8:51 p.m.
Mar 13, '07
I don't think I'm even going to discuss the fact that the intelligence bell curve was disproven years ago. And I'm not really sure what Andy meant by:
I assume you mean poor kids who are actually smart enough to learn college level material to since it doesn't make any sense to send the dumb ones there. Then they would be taking the place of smarter kids who could better use the education.
I'll withold comment until I get some clarification because taken at face value, there are some really questionable assumptions being made there.
As someone who attends a college currently looking at expanding the athletics program without any means of paying for it, I can guarantee that although it may not involve taxes paying for it, students and parents pay an extremely high price for athletic programs that make little, or more often, no money. This may be in the form of higher tuition, increased student fees, or worse, decreases in the academic programs that are supposed to be the backbone of a college's purpose to begin with.
Mar 14, '07
The bell curve was disproven years ago? Wow, so everyone is as smart as everyone else now? I must have missed that memo.
This just isn't really that important of an issue when you look at the numbers. At a school like U of O or OSU there might be 40 or 50 kids who aren't smart enough to appreciate a college education but they've gotten a full ride anyway due to their ability to swing a bat or dunk a basketball.
In the big picture that isn't that horrible of a price to pay for some entertainment. If you don't like it then donate your money to Reed College or some other place that doesn't participate in the college sports machine.
8:56 p.m.
Mar 14, '07
Good on the Ducks for overcoming a traditionally thorny opponent in USC. I still remember Adam Spanich's half-court heave at the buzzer to pin the first loss on that Luke, Luke and Freddie team that made the Elite Eight. In fact, this team lost two to the Trojans as well. Still, in the name of Pac-10 solidarity, and in the hope that it will make Billy Packer shut his freaking yap, I hope SC makes it to the second weekend, and I definitely wish them well against the Hogs, who took the bid Florida State clearly deserved.
One question: what year did Ernie Kent take over at Oregon? Jerry Green, his predecessor, was quite possibly the worst ever head coach to serve at Oregon. He made Don Monson look like Ralph Miller. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the Green era is whose teams we're talking about.
<h2>Ernie's a little heavy on the Jesus Camp aspect of collegiate athletics, and are we sure we can't get some taller players?, but even guys who got booted off the team (Crosswhite) or fell out of favor while still on it (Platt, Schafer) have had plenty of time to self-motivate toward academics. I'll bet former b-baller Jordan Kent graduates, too; wouldn't want to see the ass-whipping old Dad would dish out after he decided to leave school. And finally, even if they didn't graduate, Freddie, Luke and Luke are making comfortable livings without the degree.</h2>