Athletics

Third Annual Academic March Madness

Ed Policy — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 17:25:00 -0400

by Lindsey Luebchow

There haven't been many upsets in this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament, as big name basketball powerhouses have dominated the hardwood. But evaluate the Sweet Sixteen based on the most important academic competition of studying for and obtaining a meaningful degree and you'll find that most of the top teams wouldn't even come close to cutting down the nets in Detroit early next month.

Higher Ed Watch's third annual Academic Sweet Sixteen examines the remaining teams in the NCAA men's basketball tournament to see which squads are matching their on-court success with academic achievement in the classroom. And for the third consecutive year, academic indicators produce a championship game match-up that isn't on anyone's radar: Purdue versus Villanova, with Purdue's 80 percent graduation rate trumping Villanova's 67 percent. The University of North Carolina and Michigan State, meanwhile, round out the Final Four with graduation rates of 60 percent.

Beyond UNC, the other top seeds wouldn't be booking any tickets to Detroit. Louisville may be the overall number one seed in the tournament, but its 40 percent graduation rate wouldn't get it past the Elite Eight. That's at least better than the University of Connecticut and its dismal 25 percent graduation rate, or Pittsburgh, which has a respectable 58 percent graduation rate, but is just below Xavier's 60 percent mark.

The Academic Sweet Sixteen is a higher-stakes competition. Every year, over half of the basketball players in Division I leave college without a degree. While a select handful of these players will move on the NBA, the vast majority of those that do not graduate will be left with little academic training, minimal career options, and only the fading glory of college hoops as compensation. And the schools these players "studied" at won't shed any tears -- having already made millions of dollars off of their talents.

This bracket tries to expose these stark realities that are never part of the tournament's "One Shining Moment" highlight reel.

The Academic Sweet Sixteen bracket evaluates academic performance based on the federal graduation rate of each of the remaining teams in this year's NCAA men's basketball tournament. The most recent data available look at the average graduation rate of the four classes that entered school between 1998 and 2001 and graduated within six years of initial enrollment.

Graduation rates are not the ideal measure of academic success. Just because a student-athlete graduates doesn't take into account whether that student was funneled into a less rigorous "jock major" that provides few workplace-ready skills. Unfortunately, these are the best data publicly available from the NCAA, and until the NCAA provides more transparency on academic outcomes -- for example, courses, majors, average GPAs -- this is what we have to use.

At the top of this year's bracket are Purdue and Villanova, which appear to have figured out how to balance the academic needs of their student-athletes with the large athletic demands of playing on nationally ranked basketball teams. Other top performers include Duke, UNC, Michigan State, and Xavier, all with graduation rates of 60 percent and above. Purdue's 80 percent graduation rate tops the 73 percent of last year's champion Davidson. (Two years ago, Butler dominated by graduating 82 percent of its players.) Overall, this year's Final Four has an average graduation rate of 68 percent, one percentage point higher than last season.

Unfortunately, many schools are clearly having trouble balancing athletics and academics. Arizona is by far the worst-performing Sweet Sixteen team with a graduation rate of just 13 percent, followed by UConn (25 percent), Missouri (25 percent), and Gonzaga (27 percent). Instead of supporting their players as students, these schools are using them to gain access to a highly profitable national stage, and reaping the rewards. Though Arizona has appeared in every NCAA tournament for the last quarter century, the university has clearly forgotten that collegiate athletes are students first. Missouri, meanwhile, again shows its inability to translate athletic success into the classroom -- the Tigers came in 18th in Higher Ed Watch's second annual academic ranking of the top 25 football teams.

But just because a team's overall graduation rate is high doesn't mean that it is graduating its white and black players at an equal rate. This is a significant concern: the most recent data show that 54 percent of Division I white players left with a degree, compared to only 42 percent of black players.

While we don't have full disaggregated data by race for every team (small sample sizes are not reported for privacy reasons), we do know that Purdue, Kansas, and Louisville had particular success graduating black players. Purdue comes out on top again with a 100 percent graduation rate for its black players, while Villanova, Kansas, and UNC all posted black graduation rates of 67 percent. Then there are teams like Michigan State, Pittsburgh, and Xavier, which all graduated 100 percent of their white players, but only graduated half of their black players (or even less for Michigan State-43 percent). Two teams, Arizona and Gonzaga, failed on average to graduate even a single black player over the classes that entered school from 1998 to 2001. Once these schools accept a player, it is their responsibility to give him or her equal opportunity to achieve in the classroom, regardless of race. Unfortunately, it is clear that a disappointingly large number of the elite basketball teams are not living up to this challenge.

In measuring the athletic achievement of college athletes, the NCAA prefers to use its own graduation rate measure, the Graduation Success Rate (GSR). This metric takes the federal graduation rate data, but then includes transfer students, such as junior college players, who enter a program and then graduate, and allows schools to exclude students that left school but would have been academically eligible. While there are some positives to the GSR-for example, there's an argument that schools should not be penalized for players that leave early for the NBA-we believe the measure artificially inflates the numbers and is easily manipulated by schools that do not have their players' futures and best interests at heart.

Using the GSR in the bracket produces a toss-up championship game where Purdue (77 percent) would lose to either Duke or Villanova (both 89 percent), while UNC (86 percent) and Kansas (64 percent) round out the Final Four. At the bottom end, Arizona's 20 percent and UConn's 33 percent are a bit better than their federal graduation rates, though they still remain far behind the top teams.

So why are athletes at schools like Purdue and Villanova doing so well in the classroom, while others are struggling? Here's a guess: These universities are prioritizing and maximizing their players' time in the classroom and the library, while providing adequate remedial support for players who arrive behind academically. And they also are keeping in touch with players' professors and tracking the students' performance. In short, they are as committed to getting their student-athletes to graduation as they are getting to the Sweet Sixteen. [Of course, there are problems with academic integrity at some schools, such as jock majors and lower standards for athletes, but they will remain hidden until we get more transparency from the NCAA.]

So the next time you're looking for an upset, think about what these teams are doing off the court. Consider who the true winner will be when these players reach the end of their basketball careers (99 percent of Division I players will not make it to the NBA). While the top-tier teams go home with trophies, prestige, and revenue, many of their players are left empty-handed.

Ben Miller contributed to this piece.

Second Annual Academic Bowl Championship Series Rankings

Lindsey Luebchow — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:45:00 -0500

In a few weeks, the Florida Gators and Oklahoma Sooners will face off on college football's biggest stage in the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) National Championship game. Unfortunately, many of the college seniors playing in this game will not be walking across the graduation stage next May. Instead, their schools will revel in the short-term glory of gridiron success, while the players will have to face the long-term consequences of joining the workforce without a college degree.

Higher Ed Watch's second annual Academic BCS rankings show that Florida and Oklahoma are not the only elite football schools doing a dismal job of graduating their players. Only 55 percent of Division I-A football players leave college in six years with a degree -- and that number drops precipitously at most big-time programs that solely focus on counting Ws and Ls instead of As and Bs. It also doesn't take into account the poor quality of the education many are receiving to begin with. Jock majors don't provide job-ready skills.

So who would be contending for the crystal trophy in Miami if the match-ups were determined by academic performance? According to our rankings, it would be a showdown between Boston College and Northwestern University. Meanwhile, this year's top football contenders -- Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, and Alabama -- wouldn't even come close to competing.

The Academic BCS Formula

Higher Ed Watch's Academic BCS formula uses all of the available public data on the academic performance of football players to compile its own ranking of the nation's college teams. Sadly, the number of data points is minimal. The NCAA only releases team graduation rates, disaggregated by race, and Academic Progress Rates (APR), a measure of how players are progressing toward a degree. (If we had anything close to the amount of information available about athletic performance, we might get some meaningful indicators that explain why players aren't graduating, and whether their degrees actually mean something.)

The formula starts with the team's most recent federal graduation rate, which includes four classes of players who entered college between 1998 and 2001 and graduated within six years of initial enrollment. Then, each team gains or loses points based on (A) the gap between the team's graduation rate and the overall school's graduation rate and (B) the gap between the team's black-white player graduation rate disparity and the overall school's disparity. Finally, the team gains or loses points if its Academic Progress Rate exceeds or falls below the Division I-A median. For more detailed information on the formula, see last year's blog post and this comprehensive explanation. For all of the data from this year and last year, click here.

The 2008 Winners and Losers

Boston College owned the competition for the second consecutive year, taking the top spot in the Academic BCS rankings. But two Big Ten schools, Northwestern and Penn State, gave the Eagles a closer run for their money than last year's second and third place teams. With the highest graduation rates in the rankings (88, 78, and 75 percent, respectively) and Academic Progress Rates in the 80th to 90th percentile of all Division I-A teams, these three schools are models of academic and athletic success.

At the other end of the rankings, Michigan State and Georgia Tech join last year's bottom-feeders, Texas and Oregon, as the worst performers. Of the top five teams in the final football BCS rankings, Florida comes in with the lowest graduation rate of 36 percent, while Oregon has the lowest APR. Oregon also has a shocking 41 percent disparity between the graduation rates of its white and black players -- far and away the largest gap of the polled teams.

In general, the Academic BCS scores were slightly higher than last year -- hopefully a sign that teams are paying more attention to the student part of student-athlete. The two most-improved schools are Brigham Young and Ohio State, which jumped by nearly 12 and 10 points respectively. The Buckeyes, however, still have a long way to go to join the elite academic football teams: Ohio State graduates only 49 percent of its football players and has a black-white graduation rate of 32 percentage points.

Unfortunately, not all of the teams saw an improvement in their scores from last year. Two low-performing teams, Florida and the University of Southern California, both scored even lower this year, dropping five and six spots, respectively, in the Academic BCS rankings. Unfortunately, these teams continue to sacrifice academic achievement for football success. They seem content using their players as semi-professional athletes in order to remain in the national spotlight, instead of supporting them as students progressing toward a degree.

The Moral of the Story

Every year, college football fans get caught up in some "major" controversy with the BCS rankings. They spend hours talking about obscure statistics and cursing computer formulas. This year, it was Oklahoma and Texas fans battling it out for the right to play in the Big 12 and National Championship games. Texas fans were devastated when they lost the rankings fight.

But the real tragedy for this team is that only 40 percent of its players, and only 27 percent of its black players, will graduate. Texas' football players put the University on the national stage. And what do they get in return? Besides the precious few that will make it to the NFL, most will leave school without a degree and with few career prospects.

Teams like Boston College and Northwestern show that it is possible to field a competitive team with true student-athletes. But without real pressure from the NCAA and other outside sources to graduate football players with meaningful degrees, the top teams will continue to game the system. And college football will continue down the slippery slope of professionalization and commercialization. It's a win-win situation for almost everyone. Except, of course, for the large number of players who fail to graduate and never make it to the NFL. They will continue to bear the burden of their teams' success.

Ben Miller contributed data to this piece.

Correction: Due to a data error, this piece originally included Florida State in the rankings instead of Pittsburgh. The Panthers have a score of 54, putting them 11th in the rankings.

Higher Ed Roundup: Week of October 13 - October 17

Ed Policy — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 17:30:00 -0400

Small Private Colleges Could Suffer in Credit Crunch

Baylor Pays Students to Retake SAT

Colleges Worried About IRS Questionnaire

NCAA Reports Higher Graduation Rates Among Student Athletes

Small Private Colleges Could Suffer in Credit Crunch

The credit crunch may be starting to hit small private colleges hard -- particularly ones that have miniscule endowments and rely predominantly on tuition payments to finance their operations, according to a report released on Thursday by bond rating agency Moody's. Many of these private colleges rely on variable rate bonds with interest rates that could spike if the credit market continues to dry up. With the deteriorating financial situation, banks are also more likely to ask for early repayment on these bonds, the report warns. While banks haven't started demanding accelerated payments yet, Moody' states, they will likely do so if the credit markets remain as tight as they have been. These higher-priced colleges could also suffer, the report states, if students shift in large numbers "to lower cost alternatives," such as state universities and community colleges. "We are not worried about the vast majority of colleges," John Nelson, the managing director of Moody's told Inside Higher Ed. "That message can't be lost. The vast majority of colleges are going to be fine. But for any of them to be in financial stress is kind of news."

Baylor Pays Students to Retake SAT

Baylor University came under fire this week after its student newpaper revealed that the institution had been providing financial incentives to incoming freshmen to retake the SAT. This fall, the institution began offering admitted freshmen a $300 campus bookstore voucher to retake the exam. Those students who raised their score by 50 points could receive a $1,000 discount on tuition. Nearly one-third of the incoming class took the university up on its offer. At first, campus officials defended the practice, saying that the financial incentives amounted to "merit aid." But admissions experts and other higher education officials and commentators criticized the university, saying it was trying to game its U.S. News & World Report college rankings, which take into account the average SAT scores of a college's incoming students. On Tuesday, the Baylor Faculty Senate condemned the practice as "academically dishonest." Yesterday, the university announced that it would curtail it.

Colleges Worried About IRS Questionnaire

More than 400 colleges are expecting a 42-page questionnaire from the IRS to arrive in their mailboxes soon, and many worry that the "compliance check questionnaire" signals more extensive regulation of their institutions. Two higher education associations -- the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) -- recently sent a letter to their members warning that the effort by the IRS "portends a significant shift in the way colleges and universities are regulated and governed." Responses by colleges to the questionnaire "will be used by the IRS to determine where tighter regulation is necessary and, in some instances, to initiate audits," the groups wrote. In addition, the IRS is expected to use the responses it receives to "serve as a foundation" for a new 990 tax form for colleges.

With those concerns in mind, the groups said that they planned to conduct their own analysis of their members' answers "in order to promote clarity and understanding in the higher education community, the general public, and for policymakers, regarding what these responses say about the college and university sector." According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), who has been demanding greater scrutiny of higher education, said that if colleges were going to share the responses, he'd like to see them too. Policymakers and the public should not be asked to just accept the findings of a "higher education group funded study," he stated.

NCAA Reports Higher Graduation Rates Among Student Athletes

More college athletes are making it to graduation day, according to new data released on Tuesday by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The NCAA reported that 78 percent of Division I athletes who entered college between 1998 and 2001 graduated within six years. That's one percentage point higher than last year's data. The NCAA's "Graduation Success Rate" is higher than the federal graduation rates during the same period (64 percent for college athletes) because unlike the government figure, the association's doesn't penalize colleges for students who transfer out of school who are in good standing and rewards schools for students who transfer in to the institutions and graduate. Still, graduation rates for the most high profile college sports, such as men's basketball, continue to lag, with some schools graduating less than one-third of their players.

College Sports Reform: Opening Up the Budget Books

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:44:00 -0400

Big-time college sports teams are not only skilled on the field, they are also talented at keeping their off-the-field activities in the dark. Athletics programs, for example, are experts at keeping their budgets under wraps. As spending on college sports soars to towering new heights, faculty members, students, taxpayers, and policymakers are often clueless about how the money is being spent.

The first step toward genuine college sports reform must be greater transparency -- in academic outcomes, as I argued last week -- and also in athletics budgets and expenditure decisions. While we have anecdotes about extravagant spending, the lack of transparency makes it difficult to know the extent of the problem. In addition, the NCAA's revenue distribution and scholarship rules encourage the professionalization of sports teams by emphasizing the value of athletic performance over academic achievement.

The NCAA -- or Congress if necessary -- must require the disclosure of more detailed information about athletic spending. The NCAA must also modify its own spending rules in order to slow down the college sports arms race and ensure that all athletes have the financial support they need to finish a degree.

Shining a Light on Spending

In recent years, some powerful lawmakers have started to question the tax exempt status of the NCAA and its member institutions. For example, in 2006, Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the powerful then-chairman of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, wrote a letter to the NCAA demanding to know why the association deserved its exemption. Citing big-time football and basketball teams raking in millions of dollars in revenue each year, Thomas asked how these lucrative programs furthered the NCAA's "primary tax-exempt purpose" to "maintain intercollegiate athletics as an integral part of the educational program and the athlete as an integral part of the student body."

At most Division I football and basketball schools, the answer is they don't. The commercialization of college sports has fueled an arms race among colleges, resulting in intense competition for recruits and coaches, which in turn has led to excessive spending on salaries and facilities. Each high-profile program tries to outdo the next, pouring money into lavish new stadiums, complete with luxury skyboxes and state-of-the art training rooms.

If the NCAA wants to show Congress and taxpayers that it is serious about keeping athletics integrated with the academic mission of higher education, it needs to do something about this arms race. There are no easy answers, but, at the very least, the NCAA can bring excessive athletics spending to light -- and hopefully spur other concerned actors (faculty, students, parents, taxpayers) to force colleges to reign in the spending. If the NCAA fails to act, it up to Congress to step in and take action.

Under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, which Congress passed in 1994 to expose differences in collegiate spending on men's and women's sports, the federal government currently requires colleges that receive federal student aid and have intercollegiate sports programs to submit an annual report on athletic participation, staffing, revenue, and expenses. The financial disclosure requirements, however, are vague, allowing each college to craft its own definition of what's included in aggregate revenue and expenses. As a result, the federal athletics spending data is not comparable from school to school, making it essentially useless. The NCAA also collects revenue and expense data from each college, but reports the numbers only in aggregate.

Recommendation: Require each college to publicly report data on its athletics revenue and expenses, using consistent accounting methods.

In addition to the currently reported categories, require that colleges break down the data to reveal how much revenue their athletics programs receive from the sports teams themselves ("generated revenue") and how much the colleges provide to the programs ("allocated revenue"). Also detail how much the schools spend on coaching salaries by team and on facilities.

Sending an Academic Message

Another consequence of the athletics arms race is the widening wealth gap between high-profile sports schools and low-resource colleges that can barely support their athletic teams. While it is not practical for the NCAA to regulate spending growth, the organization does have one tool at its disposal that it can use to affect the unequal distribution of college sports revenue: a $6 billion contract with CBS to broadcast the men's basketball tournament.

At present, the NCAA allocates the lion's share of the CBS revenue to its member institutions based on their performance in the tournament and on the size of their athletics programs. Only four percent of the revenue is distributed based on the financial need of the institutions.This allocation system makes the big-time programs richer and contributes to the commercialization of college sports by emphasizing performance on the field and court.

Recommendation: Distribute a larger share of NCAA revenue to schools based on need, and eliminate performance-based rewards.

The NCAA should provide a much more generous share of its revenues to those schools that actually need the money. This would help sustain athletics programs at struggling colleges and demonstrate that the NCAA is actively working to reign in commercialization.
While it might be difficult to convince NCAA members to allocate the organization's revenue entirely based on need, the association should stop taking schools' athletic performance into account.

Creating Different Incentives

The NCAA's scholarship rules also wrongly place the most generous incentives for individual athletes on athletic performance, instead of degree attainment. The NCAA allows schools to award athletic scholarships only on a one-year basis, meaning an athlete can lose his or her scholarship for any reason including poor performance on the court or field at the end of a year. While that athlete can challenge such actions at a scholarship withdrawal hearing, the NCAA hasn't set any rules or standards for those hearings.

What type of message does a one-year scholarship send to athletes? It tells them that they have to do everything they can to excel athletically in order to receive money for their education. With the stakes so high, students will inevitably spend their free time in the weight room instead of the library. But if athletes are truly students first, then the priority should be reversed. When a college recruits a player, and the player commits to that school, the institution has a four-year responsibility to fully support that player in his or her pursuit of a degree.

Recommendation: Make athletic scholarships four-year scholarships.

Allow schools to rescind athletic scholarships only for academic or discipline reasons. If an athlete gets injured or does not make a team, the athletics program must continue to financially support the athlete (but the athlete will not count against the school's scholarship limits).
Establish NCAA guidelines for scholarship withdrawal hearings.

Unfortunately, the likelihood of the NCAA taking strong action to open up the college sports world is slim -- unless there is a significant scandal or Congress makes more transparency mandatory. I'm afraid that college sports, specifically football and basketball, will continue to drift further and further away from the true mission of athletics: to enhance a student's path toward a degree, not replace it.

I applaud individual schools that are trying to maintain the integrity of their athletics programs against the forces of commercialization. And I hope that more of the athletes who were used by their schools for profit and prominence, and left empty-handed without a degree, will speak out. At this point, their stories provide the best information we have about the dark underside of college sports.

College Sports Reform: Putting More Focus on Academics

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:00:00 -0400

It is a sad reality that many colleges do not treat their athletes as students, but rather as semi-professionals, for four years before dropping them into the real world without a meaningful degree or workforce-ready skills. Particularly at Division I basketball and football schools, colleges use their athletes to win championships and gain national prominence but too often leave them woefully unprepared for life away from the gridiron and hoops.

As I argued last week, the commercialization of college sports has gone too far. In this post, I will lay out the steps that I believe the NCAA and Congress should take to make sure that colleges aren’t allowed to lose touch with what really matters in higher education: graduating students with meaningful degrees.The first step toward reforming college sports is requiring greater transparency about the academic outcomes of athletes. Without better information, neither the NCAA nor Congress will be able to isolate and target academic abuses. The NCAA must also step up to the plate and fix flaws with its current academic monitoring and penalty system, as well as with its eligibility rules.

Providing Transparency Beyond Graduation Rates

At present, Congress requires only that colleges submit annual reports on the six-year graduation rates of their scholarship student-athletes disaggregated by team and race. The NCAA has its own "Graduation Success Rate" measure, which doesn’t count athletes who transfer or leave school early against the colleges, as the federal rate does.

Unfortunately, none of this graduation rate data gives any indication of an athlete's actual academic experience. The existence of jock majors (those with minimal requirements and easy classes), grade inflation, and inappropriate "tutoring" help are far too common. While some of these under-the-radar behaviors are impossible to track, the NCAA or Congress can ask for more detailed academic information from colleges that would reveal systemic abuses.

While the NCAA should provide better transparency without federal intervention, its record and reluctance to expose individual member schools to any scrutiny means such oversight is likely to fall to Congress. This is exactly what happened with graduation rates and the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act in the early 1990s. With that in mind, the following proposals can either be carried out voluntarily by the NCAA or mandated by Congress:

Recommendation: Require colleges to report the courses and majors selected by athletes, and the average GPA within each course and major. Also, require colleges to report on any tutoring help athletes receive.

Collecting this data would raise significant privacy concerns. There are, however, ways to protect the anonymity of individual athletes and abide by student privacy laws. Individual grades would remain private; only the collective activity of athletes would be disclosed. The goal is not to single out the behavior of individual students, but rather to get a better picture of how the institution treats a group of students.

Recommendation: Establish a new NCAA committee to monitor jock majors and the clustering of athletes.

This NCAA committee would be tasked with using the newly collected course and major data to learn more about the actual classroom experience of athletes at different schools. It could investigate any outliers -- such as majors with a disproportionate number of athletes or with higher than average GPAs. Schools would be required to submit more information on outliers and an explanation for any clustering or grade inflation that is discovered.

Improving Monitoring and Accountability

In 2004, the NCAA adopted several new academic reforms, for which the organization deserves credit. The centerpiece of these reforms was the "Academic Progress Rate" (APR), a real-time indicator of how athletes on each team are progressing toward a degree. Teams get points each semester for retaining athletes and for keeping them academically eligible. Most importantly, the NCAA implemented a system of penalties for teams that post low APRs. The introduction of the APR was an important step under Myles Brand, the current NCAA president who took over in 2002. Before Brand’s hiring, there was little examination and almost no organization-wide regulation of athletes' academic records.

Unfortunately, the APR and the accompanying penalties are not strong enough to influence the behavior of most athletic programs. The APR only tracks two things: 1) whether an athlete returns to school each semester and 2) whether an athlete completes 20 percent of the required courses for a specific degree each year. There is no minimum GPA, and there is no consideration of class rigor. In addition, the APR’s rigidity basically forces athletes to stay on the same degree track, which means that athletic programs often push them into the easiest majors as freshmen.

It is also easy for schools -- particularly those with profitable sports teams and thus money and resources -- to find ways to get their athletic programs into compliance without actually ensuring that students receive a quality education. Moreover, schools with low APRs are only penalized with scholarship reductions if players on a certain team are "0-for-2," meaning they leave school early and are also academically ineligible. There is no penalty for "1-for-2" players -- those that transfer, go pro, or exhaust their four years of eligibility but still don't graduate.

There’s also a question of enforcement. Even when some of the big-time sports teams posted low APRs last year, the NCAA let them off the hook. The association granted numerous penalty waivers without sticking to any consistent standards. The NCAA said most of the waivers are contingent upon the schools meeting "APR Improvement Plans." I'm skeptical that the organization will make an example of any high-profile school, but consistent penalties are the only way that the APR will become a meaningful standard.

Recommendation: Strengthen the APR and its penalties.

Require a minimum GPA for academic eligibility, in addition to completing 20 percent of required degree courses each year.
Allow athletes to switch between majors even if they don't meet the annual 20 percent mark if they can produce a course plan that allows them to graduate within five years.
Provide waivers for only low-resource institutions, and grant none for "APR Improvement Plans."
Establish penalties for "1-for-2" players that leave school after exhausting four years of athletic eligibility but do not graduate.

Keeping the Focus on Academics

In addition to setting new academic standards and penalties, the NCAA should consider how other policies take college athletes' focus away from academics. One prime example is the strategic use of "red-shirting," a policy which promotes professional athletic behavior (as opposed to academic, student-focused behavior) on college sports teams.

The NCAA gives all college athletes a five-year window to exhaust their four years of eligibility to compete in a sport. When players decide to take one year off, they are called "red-shirts." In concept, the practice of red-shirting for individual needs makes sense; if athletes get injured, or have academic or personal problems, they don't lose a year of playing time.

But in practice, red-shirting has become a widespread strategic tool, particularly in college football. Instead of using the red-shirt year to deal with the individual circumstances of a few players, football teams use it to bulk up most of their players and gain a competitive advantage. This takes the focus away from the athlete and places it on the needs of the team. Once red-shirted players reach their fifth year in school, many don't need to take a full course load or participate in academic life, which means they can devote themselves entirely to the team, acting like semi-professional players

.Recommendation: End strategic red-shirting.

Only allow red-shirting for injuries or personal reasons. Require players to submit red-shirt waivers that justify their need to take a year off and extend eligibility.

When Congress first required schools to publicly report the graduation rates of their athletes in 1994, it created a stir that forced colleges and the NCAA to start thinking about the academic performance of athletes. While athletic programs have made progress on graduation rates, we need more academic information to truly understand what is going on behind the veil of big-time college sports.Tune in next week for how more transparency in athletic spending can provide further sunshine and force a realignment of priorities in college athletics programs.

Luebchow's Journey: From College Sports Fan to Critic

Lindsey Luebchow — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:13:00 -0400

I've been a huge fan of college sports for as long as I can remember. If I had to pick my all-time favorite activity for a Saturday afternoon, it would be attending a college football or basketball game. But in recent years, I started to realize that college athletics is not exactly the idealized extracurricular activity of talented students that I had imagined as a child.

When I entered the higher education policy world as a writer for Higher Ed Watch two years ago, I wanted to learn more. What I found was not pretty, and I was soon struggling to figure out how college sports had lost its way, and how policymakers could steer it back in the right direction.

Now, my time on the sports beat at Higher Ed Watch is drawing to a close. Before departing the higher education blog world, I wanted to revisit my recommendations for reforming college athletics. I understand that change will not come quickly or easily, but I do believe that demanding greater accountability from colleges for the academic performance of their athletes could significantly improve the way sports programs currently do business.

My Changing View of College Sports

When I set out to investigate the nexus between college athletics and academics, I quickly found myself immersed in appalling graduation rates and stories of academic corruption. It wasn't difficult to lay bare the dirty, profit-driven side of the college athletics world. But as visible as the problems were, few people seemed to care. Outside of isolated exposés and a few dedicated professors, there weren't very many serious efforts at reform.

I sincerely believe that athletics can make important contributions to the higher education experience, and that many athletes are genuine students who learn and grow from participating in sports. I also believe that athletic teams produce valuable feelings of community and pride for an entire institution. But the commercialization of college sports, spurred specifically by the popularity of college basketball and football, has taken big-time athletic programs so far afield from their original mission that they have lost touch with what really matters in higher education: graduating students with meaningful degrees.

While looking for solutions to steer college athletics back in the right direction, I quickly came to the conclusion that we cannot rely on colleges to change their ways. There is too much money and celebrity at stake. Concerned students and faculty members just don't have enough clout to take on the powerful forces on their campuses that benefit from having big-time sports programs.

Reform, if it's going to happen at all, must be instigated from the outside, by either the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) or Congress, the two entities that have the most power to drive change in the college sports world.

Developing Solutions

Ideally, the NCAA would take the lead in demanding changes because it has the ability to enact detailed rules and regulations and rescind participation rights of its member colleges if those requirements are not met. The NCAA's decision-making bodies, however, are made up of representatives from its member schools. As a result, reforms that restrict school-level management are typically not high on the organization's to-do list.

If self-regulation doesn't work, then Congress may have to take action to force the NCAA and its member institutions to make sure that colleges are not exploiting their athletes for financial gain. Congress has the authority to oversee college sports because athletic programs, like most of the rest of higher education, are tax-exempt. Lawmakers can demand that athletic programs prove that they deserve their tax-exempt status, by requiring them to be more transparent about their budgets and about the academic performance of their athletes. With better data in hand, Congress can evaluate whether further action is needed to reform the programs.

I would love to see the NCAA ramp up its oversight of college sports before Congress has to step in. But I've heard a lot of promises from the NCAA, and a lot of rhetoric about change and not seen much happen. I know that it won't be easy to turn the college sports world back from its trek toward professionalization. However, I harbor hope that athletics and higher education can once again become compatible partners in the academic growth of student-athletes.

In the coming weeks, I will lay out my recommendations for how Congress and the NCAA can get this process underway. Stay tuned.

Exposing Institutional Subsidies for Athletics

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:13:00 -0400

With all of the talk about the commercialization of college sports, there is a common assumption that university athletics programs pay for themselves. A new report from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) reveals, however, that most Division I schools are actually footing a significant part of the bill for their sports teams. The report also shows the amount colleges are spending on athletics has been rising rapidly, raising questions for students, faculty members, and taxpayers about colleges' priorities (hint, hint: we're talking about extravagant athletics facilities and sky-rocketing coaching salaries here).

In its new spending report, the NCAA, for the first time, provides a break down of the revenue that intercollegiate athletics programs receive -- distinguishing between those earned by the sports teams themselves ("generated revenue") and those that the colleges provide to the programs ("allocated revenue"). The NCAA's decision to provide these breakdowns represents an important step forward for athletic spending transparency in that it allows us to see the extent to which colleges are subsidizing their sports programs.

However, the usefulness of the report is limited as it discloses only aggregate numbers. As a result, we are left in the dark about how this is playing out institution by institution. At Higher Ed Watch, we believe that the federal government needs to strengthen its institutional reporting requirements on athletics spending, because it doesn't appear that the NCAA is willing to expose its members to that type of scrutiny anytime soon.

Institutional Subsidies for Athletics

Of the 119 schools that participate in Division I-A football, only 19 have athletic programs that generated enough revenue to exceed expenses in 2006. At the other 100 schools, the athletics programs recorded a net loss, meaning that the colleges had to step in and help make up the difference. The median loss for those programs reached $8.9 million in 2006, up from $7.1 million in 2004.

This growing gap between generated revenues and expenses translates into rising institutional subsidies. Median expenses for all Division I teams increased 23 percent between 2004 and 2006, but the median amount of revenue that the athletic programs earned for themselves increased by only 16 percent.

Where's the Money Going?

Spending institutional money on athletics programs isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most sports outside of football and basketball would never be able to support themselves financially without colleges giving them a helping hand. If money on athletics is spent prudently and economically, and the athletics program is run responsibly, then institutional subsidies could be justified.

But unfortunately, at many Division I schools, spending is out of control. The commercialization of college sports has fueled a race among colleges to compete with big-time sports schools, resulting in intense competition for recruits and coaches, and in turn excessive spending on facilities and salaries.

The NCAA report documents the meteoric rise of coaching salaries. At the 119 Division I-A schools, the median head football coach salary rose to $855,500 in 2006 from $582,000 in 2004, a 47 percent increase. The median head basketball coach salary rose 15 percent during that time period to $611,000. The third highest median salary was for men's ice hockey coaches, at a shocking $252,000 (this for a sport that generates revenues of only $689,700, with a median expense of $1.7 million). Regrettably for us, and conveniently for schools, the NCAA report does not track capital spending on facilities -- a gaping hole in the NCAA's efforts at athletics spending transparency.

Budget Transparency at the Institutional Level

Because the NCAA report includes only median spending figures, either aggregated at the division level or by sport, there is no way to see what is actually happening on the ground at a particular institution. Your school may be the one whose athletics program spent a whopping $100 million in 2006, the highest expense level in the NCAA report. But how are you to know?

Under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, the federal government requires colleges that receive federal student aid and have intercollegiate sports programs to submit an annual report on athletic participation, staffing, and revenue and expenses. However, the spending disclosure requirements are vague, allowing each school to craft its own definition of what's included in aggregate revenue and expenses. Because accounting is different at each school, the federal athletics spending data is not comparable and therefore is essentially useless.

The federal government should require athletics programs to use consistent accounting definitions when calculating revenue and expenses. In addition, it should require schools to disaggregate this data into designated categories, such as generated vs. allocated revenue and spending on coaching salaries, facilities, scholarships etc. Colleges are already collecting this data for the NCAA, so adding this requirement shouldn't create a significant reporting burden for them.

Athletics spending on many campuses is out of control and not in line with the educational mission of their institutions. Unless college athletics is converted into a for-profit enterprise, the federal government has a right to require budget transparency at the institutional level. You certainly have the right to know whether your tax or tuition dollars are being used to pay the hockey coach a six-figure salary.

No NCAA Showdown Over Academic Penalties

Lindsey Luebchow — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:00:00 -0400

When the National Collegiate Athletic Association announced its penalties for poor athlete academic performance this week, it let many high-profile Division I college basketball and football teams off the hook.

After four years of collecting data, the organization was set to enact full scholarship penalties for teams that fail to keep their athletes on track to graduate. But because of the NCAA's generous use of waivers for wealthy, high-profile athletic programs, as well as a flawed penalty structure, many teams with poor academic records found themselves in the clear.

Under the NCAA's Academic Progress Rates (APR) system, teams get points each semester for retaining athletes and for keeping them academically eligible. The NCAA has a system of penalties for teams that post low APRs. For the past three years, most teams have not been subject to the penalties, however, because of squad-size adjustments, or exemptions due to insufficient data.

This year, the full penalties came into effect, and any team with an APR below 925 (which corresponds to a 50 percent federal graduation rate) was supposed to be subject to "immediate penalties," or reductions in scholarships. Any team with an APR below 900 was supposed to be subject to "historical penalties," which are more severe and range from reductions in practice time to restrictions on postseason competition and Division I membership.

The APR isn't a rigorous test of academic performance: athletic programs are awarded one point for each athlete who simply remains enrolled in school and another point for each athlete who maintains their academic eligibility. The goal is to make sure that players are actual students, in a very minimal sense of the word.

But many teams are struggling to meet even these low standards. Over 40 percent of men's basketball teams (137 teams) and nearly 34 percent of football teams (81 teams) posted a four-year average APR (2003-07) below 925.

Yet this week the NCAA announced that only 37 college football teams and 53 college basketball teams would be penalized next season—about 40 percent of those with APRs below 925. What gives?

One reason that many teams escaped being hit with scholarship reductions involves the NCAA's penalty structure. If a team posts an APR below 925, it loses scholarships only if a player leaves the college early in poor academic standing (otherwise known as a "0-for-2" players—those who drop out when they are also academically ineligible).

Take, for example, Maryland's basketball team, which recorded a very low APR score of 906. The team did not lose any scholarships because the players who left the school without graduating had already exhausted their academic eligibility (and thus technically weren't "0-for-2" because they didn't drop out early). This is a pretty large loophole, especially for a basketball team with such a low APR—and a most recent graduation rate of zero percent (for players who entered between 1997 and 2000).

In addition, the NCAA granted waivers to some low-performing football and basketball teams at "low resource institutions," including many historically black college and universities. Such waivers are considered appropriate, so long as the NCAA requires the athletic programs at these schools to demonstrate improvement over time.

But the NCAA also granted waivers to wealthy, big-time sports schools that have plenty of money to spend on academic support. Instead of standing up to these universities and penalizing them for their academic failings, the NCAA quietly consented to their waiver requests.

Ohio State University's basketball team is a perfect example: with an APR of 909, and a most recent federal graduation rate of 27 percent, the program should have been subject to scholarship reductions for next year. But Ohio State submitted an "APR Improvement Plan" to the NCAA, with promises of more tutoring and monitoring of athletes, and thus avoided the penalty.

Other high-profile teams that were granted waivers include the University of South Carolina's football team, Purdue University's football team, and Indiana University's basketball team. The NCAA granted waivers to 11 percent of teams of teams with APRs below 925 in this category.

If the NCAA is serious about academic reform, it should make an example of these high-profile sports schools. And if it wants to force real change, it needs to strengthen its penalty system. Little will change if fewer than half of the men's basketball and football teams with scores below 925 are actually punished.

In announcing the recent penalties, Myles Brand, the president of the NCAA, passed the ball. It might make sense, he said, for schools "to put money into the development of academic resources than into the development of new [football stadium] suites."

We hate to break it to you Mr. Brand, but no big-time sports school is going to shift money to academics by choice. You need to force them to by implementing and enforcing academic penalties with teeth.

In Pursuit of a Quality College Education: An Academic All-Star Basketball Team

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:33:00 -0400

Last week, Higher Ed Watch published its annual "Academic Sweet Sixteen" bracket, which ranks the teams in the NCAA tournament based on their basketball team graduation rates. While it's important to consider how many players leave school with degrees in their hands, there's a significant flaw in the comparison. We have no way to determine whether players who graduated actually learned anything or obtained the skills necessary to enter the workforce.

As we discussed during the football season, there is no data on college quality for athletes and very little for college students in general. It's widely known that athletes often cluster in "jock majors," which provide them with classes that demand and teach very little. The goal of many big-time basketball teams is simply to keep their players academically eligible, not to give them an education that will be of value in the future.

But because there is no objective way to track the relative worth of athletes' degrees (and remember, this problems extends to all consumers of higher education), we have to rely on anecdotal evidence.

On the positive side, there are examples of basketball players and teams that excel both on the court and in the classroom. Higher Ed Watch wants to applaud some of these current players, and use them as an example for the teams that place little value on academics. As shocking as this may sound, these athletes show that it is possible to be a highly successful Division I basketball player and graduate with a meaningful degree.

The following players are seniors who will graduate in May, and they have all started games for teams that made the NCAA tournament this year:

Adam Emmeneker, Drake
Four majors: management, business, finance and entrepreneurial management
3.97 GPA
Cliff Hammonds, Clemson
Double major: architecture and psychology
3.2 GPA
First scholarship basketball player on record at Clemson to earn a degree in architecture
A. J. Graves, Butler
Major: Mathematics and Actuarial Science
3.35 GPA
(Butler also won Higher Ed Watch's Academic Sweet Sixteen last year with a 83 percent graduation rate)
Justin Hare, Belmont
Major: Exercise Science, Pre-Med
3.86 GPA
Plans to attend medical school
Sasha Kaun, Kansas
Major: Computer Science
At least 3.2 GPA
"Computer whiz"; participated in an engineering robotic competition
Jonathan Wallace, Georgetown
Major: Government
Admitted to Georgetown University Law Center
Ty Rogers, Western Kentucky
Major: Business management, minor in entrepreneurship
3.8 GPA

That's a pretty impressive list. In contrast, consider the University of Memphis men's basketball team this year (most recent graduation rate: 30 percent): Of the six juniors and seniors who have declared majors, three are majoring in "Interdisciplinary Studies," two in "Sport and Leisure Management," and one in "Communication." These don't sound like the most rigorous academic tracks to us.

The broader point, however, is that we don't really know anything about the education that these athletes received. Maybe the Sport and Leisure Management department at Memphis has very high standards and produces students well-prepared to enter a management career upon graduation.

However, stories like this recent investigative series in The Ann Arbor News raise major questions about the academic integrity of big-time sports programs. The Ann Arbor News found that a very high percentage of University of Michigan athletes, particularly football players, major in "general studies" and enroll in numerous independent study classes. This clustering of athletes in a cushy academic track raises red flags about the quality of Michigan athletes' degrees.

But it's only when the media takes the time to do these investigations or when frustrated faculty members speak up that academic quality problems are exposed. The NCAA needs to start keeping comprehensive data on academic quality for its athletes—for example, an accounting of the courses taken by athletes with statistics such as GPAs or course requirements. And higher education institutions in general need to establish better quality measures for all students.

All college degrees are not equal—and unless colleges and the NCAA take steps to prove that the degrees received by their students have real value, they are both at risk: colleges of losing consumers, and the NCAA of losing its tax-exempt status.

Academic Madness in March

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:10:00 -0400

Amid the flashy, commercialized spectacle of March Madness, it's time again for Higher Ed Watch to bring some sanity to the national debate about which team deserves to be crowned the NCAA champion. Like last year, we have a different take on how to calculate basketball team success. It's not about RPI, or victory margin, or strength of schedule. We're interested in how the Sweet Sixteen basketball teams are performing in the classroom.

Higher Ed Watch has been critical of the student-athlete charade at most top basketball and football programs. These teams do not adequately support the academic development of their athletes, instead using them to win on the field and court and gain national media attention and commercial value for the school.

A majority of players leave without a professional career (around one percent make it to the NBA), without a college degree (55 percent of Division I basketball players do not graduate), and without a future. Even those with degrees are tracked into jock majors and do not receive a quality education. Most of this year's Sweet Sixteen teams—particularly the top-ranked powerhouses—fit this mold.

Last year, we compared the final sixteen teams on several factors, including basketball team graduation rates. Butler and Vanderbilt squared off in the championship game, and Butler's 82 percent graduation rate prevailed over Vanderbilt's 67 percent. We played out the Sweet Sixteen bracket again this year, first using the most recent federal graduation rates, for players entering college between 1997 and 2000 and graduating within six years of initial enrollment. The results of our Academic Sweet Sixteen bracket are almost certainly not what you will see on the court this weekend.

Davidson, a small "mid-major" school in North Carolina—with its first NCAA tournament wins this year since 1969—is the champion. Xavier and Stanford pull in at second place, and UNC is the only top-ranked team with a fairly strong showing. None of the other number one seeds graduate more than 40 percent of their players. The average graduation rate of the 16 teams is a dismal 44 percent—a slight uptick from last year's Sweet Sixteen average of 38.5 percent.

One criticism of the graduation rate bracket is that we are judging this year's teams based on the academic performance of previous teams. Well, the NCAA has an "Academic Progress Rate" (APR) measure that tracks how the current basketball players are progressing towards a degree. If we play out the bracket based on APRs, the results are almost exactly the same, except that Michigan State makes the Final Four instead of Stanford, but then loses to Xavier. With either measure, the teams that perform well in the classroom set themselves apart. It doesn't appear that relative academic performance is changing much over time.

But in addition to looking at the team's overall graduation rate, it's also important to consider how these teams are supporting their black players. There are disturbing graduation rate disparities between black and white basketball players at many of the big-time sports programs. UCLA, for example, graduated only 20 percent of its black players, in comparison to 100 percent of its white players. Coaches often recruit black players who are athletically gifted but not prepared for the academic rigor of college, a sad result of K-12 achievement gaps.

Athletics represents a gateway to higher education for many black students. A disproportionate number of black undergraduates participate in athletics, in comparison to the white student population. But when athletics is used as an access tool for black students, and then those students are not given the tools to graduate, the purported educational opportunity becomes a farce. Schools have a responsibility to ensure that their black athletes are on track to get a degree; otherwise, they are using them, plain and simple.

Of the Sweet Sixteen teams, Stanford had the highest black basketball player graduation rate, at 71 percent, with Davidson in second at 67 percent. Tennessee, Washington State, Memphis, and West Virginia are at the bottom with UCLA—they all fail to graduate more than 30 percent of their black players. [Unfortunately, we cannot compare the teams' black-white graduation rate disparities, because many schools have a small number of white scholarship basketball players and thus do not report their disaggregated graduation rate.]

As you watch the rest of the NCAA tournament, take a moment to think about the NCAA's promotional tagline: "There are 380,000 NCAA student-athletes...and just about all of them will go pro in something other than sports."

They aren't referring to basketball players. In order to go pro in something other than sports, you need a college degree. You need to get a quality education and leave college with meaningful skills (tune in next week for more on this issue). Many basketball players aren't going to be able to go pro in anything, sports or otherwise.