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Educational Madness

By apalazzo on March 19, 2006.

I'm not a big fan of March Madness (for non-Americans March Madness is the term used to describe the huge college basketball tournament held this time of year). Why? Perhaps because I'm Canadian. Perhaps because I don't think the lure of entertainment money and collegial athletic glory is good for a school. The greed that comes with these programs brings havoc to the infrastructure of these educational institutions.

And there are the scandals to prove it.

So in a column by Derrick Jackson, in yesterday's Boston Globe, I wasn't surprised to see that the graduation rates for black college basketball athletes are (in some colleges) incredibly low. Note how the graduation rate for Duke (quite a prestigious school) is at 25%, and UCLA ... 27%. Between the 95-96 and 98-99 academic years, not a single black basketball player at Nevada succeeded in graduating.

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Is this the function of our institutions of higher learning?

To get a better look at the chart click here.

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News flash: Division I college athletes don't always graduate. Holy cow! Palazzo, it's unfortunate that you approach this news with a complete lack of nuance and turn it into an opportunity to take a cheap shot at college athletics. To advance cherry-picked stats like those put forth in the Globe article is rather silly. You could at least take the time to compare graduation stats of African-American athletes with the graduation stats of African-American males in general. Then again, this might not support your blatantly biased perspective. Like most things, college athletics is not 100% good or 100% bad, but one would never know that based on your post.

Note how the graduation rate for Duke (quite a prestigious school) is at 25%, and UCLA ... 27%

These percent grad rates are a bit biased. Many of the players who failed to graduate did so because they left college early to go to the NBA. A better metric would be the % of players who graduated out of those that did not become professional athletes (ie, failed to earn a certain income from playing professionally)

In the United States, colleges and universities act as minor leagues for basketball and American football. Other sports, like hockey and baseball, have professional leagues that support a minor league system. The question should be whether or not institutes of higher learning should be minor leagues for professional sports. If it is ok for them to be minor leagues, the low grad rates are acceptable as long as the players are going pro.

Good point, RPM -- I suspect nearly all of Duke's non-graduates went on to make at least six figures in the NBA. UAB, on the other hand, has the same graduation rate, and I suspect not quite the same rate of success in professional sports.

I would add that the NBA isn't the only option. A lot of these players go on to play in Europe so there are a lot of options that, sadly, don't require degrees. There are a lot of problems with college sports but I agree that the statistics aren't so simple to break down.

This entry on NoSeNada says it all:
http://scienceblogs.com/nosenada/2006/03/carl_wieman_leaves_because_of…
In particular this quote from Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman:

"It was pretty clear to me that in Canada, their universities are much less wrapped up in politics and much less dominated by athletics," said Wieman, who mentioned that scandals surrounding the athletics department were a "pervasive distraction from (CU's) focus on education."