<p>
[quote]
Knute Rockne, he was not. But when Myles Brand spoke to athletics officials at Elon University this month, saying he wanted to see 80 percent of college athletes complete their degrees -- the message from the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association reverberated throughout college sports.</p>
<p>Mr. Brand's goal seemed ambitious to athletics officials accustomed to hearing that, on average, only six in 10 college athletes graduate within six years.
<p>So what do colleges do to boost the graduate rates for athletes? Create artificial rocks for jocks programs that cater to the lowest academic denominator. Frankly, I respect more the college that says, yeah well give you a shot here even though your grades and SATs arent even in the same universe as our typical students, but youre gonna be held to the same standards. </p>
<p>They do the same thing in high schools- pass these kids on even though they dont have basic reading and math skills. Then they get a big football or basketball scholarship to a respectable college and what do you know? They cant hack it. Hello. Is this any big surprise?</p>
<p>Now the colleges are saying they gotta figure out ways to get these kids through. Why? Lets be a little Darwinian here. When does the hand holding end?</p>
<p>If they want to boost graduation rates, they should pay them for being there like the professionals they are.</p>
<p>The single greatest cause of failure to complete college is family income difficulties/illnesses. Doesn't matter whether the students are athletes or not.</p>
<p>I agree that for the average student, income and illness is the usual cause of failure. But when kids that barely passed in easy high school classes and SATs in the 800 range are admitted to a selective universities to play ball, it is no wonder that they aren't going to be able to make it, not matter what. You can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear. I don't mean to sound tactless here. I have great admiration and respect for the collegiate and professional athlete. They have skills that most of us can only dream about. But for some of them (not all), academic prowess is not in their list of attributes. </p>
<p>Anyway, I've seen the help and support they get in the way of private tutoring, study halls, special classes, etc. Some of them just can't do the work period. It's too bad they've been sold a bill of goods that somehow they're going to be able to compete in the same classroom with valedictorians, NM scholars, and such. I agree about paying them though. I think it's sad that colleges put a kid who really needs remedial high school classes in a situation like that.</p>
<p>But they DO make it. As noted in the previous forum, even at some of the schools with what look like low graduation rates (like OSU), graduation rates are as high or higher than their race/class peer groups, 800 SAT scores and all. And the same is true (it seems) at Notre Dame. Make it possible for them to stay, and grad rates would go up for both athletes and non-athletes.</p>
<p>"I think it's sad that colleges put a kid who really needs remedial high school classes in a situation like that."</p>
<p>I think it is WONDERFUL. I think it is the first time in many of these students' lives that they have felt at all challenged, with expectations that they are to keep up, and that there are academic supports to help. And that, furthermore, there are classmates with better skills, and that they see these skills are valued.</p>
<p>And I think this is true for those who drop out as well. Without athletics, they never would have gone to college at all. "Some college" puts them in a much better position than "no college", graduation or not. Provided the necessary economic supports, and graduation rates would soar.</p>
<p>I think mini has made some good points here. </p>
<p>What I would like to see all NCAA schools that award scholarships be required to leave that scholarship "open" until said student recieves his/her degree. In otherwords if I fail to graduate in my early twenties, I can come back free of charge in my 30's and try again. The door will always be open. </p>
<p>I was very impressed not too long ago with the U of Washington and the 37 year old "spider" gaines. Spider was the go to reciever for recent hall of famer Warren Moon at the UW back in the 70's. Spider failed to graduate back then and a few years ago turned up back at the UW working towards his degree. The UW picked up the cost 15 years later. </p>
<p>I don't know if all NCAA schools do this, but they should.</p>
<p>Im going to play devils advocate here. This is probably going to make a lot of people really angry, but I'm going to say it anyway.</p>
<p>They make it because theyre put into programs that were specially created for them. Underwater Basketweaving. When I was in college, there was a major for the jocks that sounded like business (I think it had industry somewhere in the name) but didnt require ANY business classes. It was a joke. </p>
<p>So they get out with a piece of paper. </p>
<p>It's a travesty, the kind of "degrees" that some of these students (the ones with the 800 SATs and barely passing high school grades) get from competitive (Notre Dame-like) colleges. Were talking the difference between students with an 800 and a 2.0 vs. students with 1400+ and 4.0s. Were talking about students who werent even in the same classes in high school. How are they going to compete in the same classes in college? They dont.</p>
<p>Plus, tell the kids who got rejected from the same schools after busting their tails for 12 years in the classroom how wonderful it is that the felony-record-school-bully football player gets a chance. </p>
<p>Plus they're not challenged, they're not given the same education that the rest of the students are because they can't do the work. They're shunted into dumbed-down programs. That's not fair to them either.</p>
<p>Mini, Im sorry if I look like Im picking. I am trying to be a devils advocate. Im all for getting these kids into college and turning their lives around. It just ticks me off to see how theyre treated once they are there. In most cases, theyre kept around for as long as possible, and then they find out after five or six years that their 100 or so hours of PE and other silly electives dont add up to a meaningful degree. It's a bunch of academic elitists making themselves look benevolent and pretending to provide a college education to their bought and paid for athletes.</p>
<p>"It's a travesty, the kind of "degrees" that some of these students (the ones with the 800 SATs and barely passing high school grades) get from competitive (Notre Dame-like) colleges. We’re talking the difference between students with an 800 and a 2.0 vs. students with 1400+ and 4.0s. We’re talking about students who weren’t even in the same classes in high school. How are they going to compete in the same classes in college? They don’t."</p>
<p>Oh, I had ones like that at Williams, who weren't even athletes. (Do I have stories!) Remember Bill Bradley with his 483 Verbal Score at Princeton? How about Harvard with it, (to quote a former director of admissions there), it's "happy bottom quarter"? It's almost impossible to flunk out of these places academically, unlike Ohio State or U. Washington. And I don't care in the least what they had going in.</p>
<p>But, I do agree with you. I DO care what they have "going out". I hate to see them shortchanged. Athletes can be treated poorly, which is why I think the colleges should pay them like the professionals they are. And, if they were paid, they'd be able to help support their families, and hence might be more likely to stay in school and graduate.</p>
<p>Heres an example of what Im talking about- a guy I know (ex-football player) graduated with some kind of degree in recreation, sports, or PE- something like that (Im not exactly sure and dont want to press it). Anyway, this degree was supposed to prepare him to coach and teach in the school system. He cant pass the state certification to teach in the school system. He wasnt educated- he was USED.</p>
<p>So he'll study and take it a couple of times (like lots of Ivy-educated architects I know). Or work in a state like Georgia where he won't even need a teaching certificate. </p>
<p>Hey, I agree that he was used, and he deserves to have been paid for his services.</p>
<p>^ Doubleplay, I think we know the same guy, except the one I know didn't turn out so well. </p>
<p>Years of steriod use left him so agitated he can't focus on anything long enough to be successful at it; he has to take menial jobs because (thanks to all the school sanctioned cheating from about 5th grade through college) he didn't learn any more reading or math once he was the middle ! school football hero; and he usually gets fired because all the special treatment he got convinced him that basic workplace rules (like don't joyride on the weekends in the company truck) simply don't apply to people who once played in a bowl game. Pushing 50, he periodically ends up homeless or in a halfway house, because he can't care for or provide for himself.</p>
<p>This fellow tried the PE teaching route too, but he know there was no way he could read well enough to pass the teacher exam. So one of his frat buddies got a fake ID and went to take it for him. He got caught, and they both got kicked out. He eventually did end up with a general studies degree, but only because a frat brother who was a little better at the fake ID thing took a math course for him at another campus.</p>
<p>What makes the situation even sadder is that in 3rd grade, he was identified as being what we would call gifted today. If he had just been held to the same standards as the other kids, no telling where his life would have taken him.</p>
<p>There are some colleges that do a great job, but many of these programs do use the hell out of the kids. This guy (and his family) placed all their eggs in the "He's going to be in the NFL; he doesn't need to read and write or do arithmetic" basket. Then in college, his coaches pushed him to play on multiple teams (football, basketball, golf, and tennis). This didn't allow him to focus on any one of them enough to make it to the next level; being drafted or picked up as a walk-on was out of the question.</p>
<p>"Teach", narrowly defined. You do know about the new use of "paraprofessionals" in Georgia classrooms over the past four years, and that substitute teachers (and some of them are "permanent substitutes") do not have to be certified.</p>
<p>Yes, unfortunately, I worked for the local system in 1990 and at that time they would hire you as a "certified" teacher until you took the exams. If you failed, they would reclass you as a substitute - and then you would have to repay the salary differential. And the state preferred it that way. (I was in Finance.)</p>
<p>I do believe that there are more certified teachers teaching, but in our system with about 33,000 students and around 2,500 teachers there are about 300 "subs" at any given time. All it takes to be a sub is a six-week post-secondary course in anything (like training to be a bank teller). I really have not noticed that many paras actually "teaching" classes, but that is probably because the number of paras has been significantly reduced over the last ten years.</p>
<p>Having said that I do believe that the district we are in can not retain teachers because they are so petty and beaurocratic and basically mean-spirited. Sorry, just a vent and a hot button.</p>
<p>But I did want to point out that Georgia has made a lot of progress since I graduated from high school (1974).</p>
<p>But the major change in Georgia in the past four years has been the use of paraprofessionals taking in the lead in classroom instruction, "supervised" by a "master-teacher" who is not in the classroom at all. The number of "paras" in the old sense has been reduced, but the number of classroom lead paras has massively increased. </p>
<p>Whether it is progress or regress is simply a matter of opinion. (We homeschooled, and I'm willing to send anyone any certificate they'd like. ;))</p>
<p>“This diminishes greatly the value of the education received at Auburn,” said Wayne Flynt, a professor emeritus of history. “Now people all over the country are speculating whether students did any work for the grades they earned at Auburn. I’d rather see an athletics scandal where a handful of athletes were receiving preferential treatment. That would have been a far less damning indictment of the university.”</p>
<p>I really resent your broad brush strokes of college athletes.</p>
<p>Quoting you: "It's a travesty, the kind of "degrees" that some of these students (the ones with the 800 SATs and barely passing high school grades) get from competitive (Notre Dame-like) colleges. Were talking the difference between students with an 800 and a 2.0 vs. students with 1400+ and 4.0s. Were talking about students who werent even in the same classes in high school. How are they going to compete in the same classes in college? They dont."</p>
<p>The following are college softball TEAM GPA's. I'm pretty sure all 20 players on all 95 teams are not taking "underwater basket weaving".</p>
<p>You gave ONE example of someone you went to school with. I'd like to give you 45 examples of young women athletes today.</p>
<p>No. Institution Head Coach Team GPA<br>
1 St. Bonaventure University Mike Threehouse 3.590
2 Drake University Rich Calvert 3.510<br>
3 Lehigh University Fran Troyan 3.493<br>
4 University of Detroit Mercy Bob Wilkerson 3.481<br>
5 University of South Carolina Joyce Compton 3.463<br>
6 Coastal Carolina University Jess Dannelly 3.457<br>
7 Gardner-Webb University Thomas Cole 3.430<br>
8 Eastern Michigan University Karen Baird 3.419<br>
9 Baylor University Glenn Moore 3.409<br>
10 Delaware State University Jeff Savage 3.400<br>
11 Jacksonville University Amanda Lehotak 3.393<br>
12 Marshall University Shonda Stanton 3.391<br>
13 Southern Illinois University Kerri Blaylock 3.374<br>
14 University of North Florida Sonya Wilmoth 3.360<br>
15 Saint Louis University John Conway 3.360<br>
16 University of Florida Tim Walton 3.350<br>
17 University of Maine Stavey Sullivan 3.349<br>
18 Mississippi State University Jay Miller 3.330<br>
19 Harvard University Jenny Allard 3.321<br>
20 University of Kentucky Eileen Schmidt 3.317
21 Indiana State University Brenda Coldren 3.314<br>
22 University of Hartford Todd Randall 3.310<br>
23 Middle Tennessee State University Leigh Podlesay 3.300<br>
24 St. John's University Amy Kvilhaug 3.299<br>
25 University of Evansville Gwen Lewis 3.293<br>
26 University of Tennessee at Martin Donley Canary 3.286<br>
27 University of Dayton Jodi Eickemeyer 3.286<br>
28 Winthrop University Mark Cooke 3.280<br>
29 Dartmouth College Christine Vogt 3.278<br>
30 University of Arkansas Jamie Pinkerton 3.270 </p>
<p>80 James Madison University Katie Flynn 3.002
81 University of Oregon Kathy Arendsen 3.000<br>
82 George Mason University Joe Vertanic 2.990<br>
83 Mercer University Tony Foti 2.985<br>
84 Wichita State Unversity Mike Perniciaro 2.985<br>
85 Sacred Heart University Elizabeth Luckie 2.970<br>
86 Rutgers University Jay Nelson 2.968<br>
87 Illinois State University Melinda Fischer 2.960<br>
88 University of Iowa Gayle Blevins 2.938<br>
89 University of California, Riverside Connie Miner 2.912<br>
90 University of Alabama at Birmingham Marla Townsend 2.904<br>
91 University of Massachusetts, Amherst Elaine Sortino 2.897<br>
92 University of Louisiana at Monroe Rosemary Holloway 2.880<br>
93 United States Military Academy Jim Flowers 2.870<br>
94 Birmingham-Southern College Tyra Perry 2.675<br>
95 University of Texas at El Paso Kathleen Rodriguez 2.513</p>