<p>"For the 8th straight year, the Patriot League ranked 1st among all Division 1 conferences in student-athlete graduation rates, according to the NCAA graduation rate report." (Patriot League website)</p>
<p>Yup, that means the Patriot League graduates a higher percentage of its athletes than the Ivy League. </p>
<p>Patriot League Schools: American, Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Lehigh, Army (except football), Navy (except football).<br>
(Georgetown & Fordham are Patriot League for football only)</p>
<p>Just something for the brainier recruited athletes to keep in mind....</p>
<p>I’m trying to find confirmation of this. When I go to the NCAA site and look for graduation rates, when I pull up Ivy League schools no graduation rates are listed-- the columns are all blank. So I don’t know where the data comes from that says that the Patriot League graduates more of its athletes. Have you got a cite?</p>
<p>It may be that the Ivies, since they nominally don’t offer athletic scholarships, are not required by law to report this information and do not report it, in which case there can be no comparison with the Patriot League numbers.</p>
<p>When I went to the NCAA site the info for The University of Alabama was very old - like 10 years old and more!</p>
<p>Head Coach Nick Saban recently reported that his football team has something like an 80% grad rate, and his current team already has something like 8-10 graduates currently playing while pursuing masters degrees. The current quarterback is a grad, and last year’s quarterback was also a grad while playing.</p>
<p>Colgate does not give athletic scholarships. Nor does Lafayette. I’m not sure about the others. I remember that there was a post on the Holy Cross subforum a few months ago that suggested that Holy Cross was contemplating offering athletic scholarships for football. I would hope that is not the case.</p>
<p>The Patriot league stopped giving scholarships … and recently allowed members to give then again if they wanted to. “The Last Amatuers” is a terrific book covering one basketball season in the Patriot League … looking into the D1 life of players who play for their team for 4 years (no one goes pro early), know their competative bball life ends at the end of college, and are striving for careers like doctor, lawyer, officer (Army and Navy), and teacher … it is a GREAT read!</p>
<p>The IVY league does not give out athletic scholarships (or merit scholarships) … and any school pushing the rules is subject to penalties from the conference … that said I would not be surprised if some recruited athletes got financial aid packages within the normal range but onthe more favorable end of the range.</p>
<p>The IVY league does not give out athletic scholarships (or merit scholarships) … and any school pushing the rules is subject to penalties from the conference … that said I would not be surprised if some recruited athletes got financial aid packages within the normal range but onthe more favorable end of the range.
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<p>Since many athletes come from families with lowish incomes, it doesn’t matter if the ivies don’t give athletic scholarships. Those athletes would qualify for loan-free financial aid. So, except for rich athletes, it’s now silly to say that Ivy athletes don’t get athletic scholarships… dollars are dollars.</p>
<p>WHO CARES what they call it…free money is free money.</p>
<p>A Lehigh/Lafayette football game is not quite like an Alamama/Auburn game.</p>
<p>The Patriot League is stacked with very selective colleges, they are small private (except for Army & Navy) who enroll kids with a very high family income. They do not need to recruit the caliber of athlete that Alabama does for football or UConn does for women’s basketball.
All of that makes for very high graduation rates. No surprise there.</p>
<p>Take a student who is admitted to both Colgate and UConn for athletics and that student will probably graduate on time - regardless of where he/she enrolls.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids -
not the same. the basketball player at Harvard who is financing his education through financial aid can quit the team any time. The basketball player at Duke who is on scholarship can’t quit.</p>
<p>Some (not all) of the Patriot League schools give quite a bit of athletic scholarship money in certain sports. Colgate does not. The Ivy League schools give quite a bit of “need-based” money to top athletes- but nothing like the other D1 conferences for the major sports.</p>
<p>The NCAA in one of its many hypocritical acts, made scholarships year to year. This allows coaches to take them away from kids they do not like for any reason, such as not growing enough or studying more than weightlifting. For example, the new coach at Kentucky cut most of the returning players–and to have gotten scholarships at Kentucky, they must have been very, very good in HS</p>
<p>To return to the initial claim, that the Patriot League graduates more of its athletes than the Ivy League, I now think I understand what’s going on.</p>
<p>The NCAA (or possibly federal law) requires that all colleges which grant athletic scholarships report graduation rates of student-athletes. No Ivy League school grants athletic scholarships, though Ivies in general are generous with financial aid to all accepted students. Therefore, the Ivies are not required to report the graduation rate of student athletes. The Patriot League schools, as we see from EMM1’s link, do grant athletic scholarships.</p>
<p>The Patriot League may be claiming that it has the highest student-athlete graduation rate of all schools required to report that rate, which doesn’t include the Ivies.</p>