Athletics

It's March, and for any basketball fan, this means three glorious weeks of watching the premier teams in the nation battle it out in a single-elimination, high-stakes, high-pressure tournament. March also means big money for the NCAA, which cashed in on the popularity of March Madness by giving CBS the rights to broadcast the tournament for $6 billion over 11 years.

One team you aren't going to hear anything about during the tournament is Alcorn State, a small, historically black college that finished the season 7-24, at the bottom of the Southwestern Conference (SWAC). As we at Higher Ed Watch discussed last week, there is a growing college sports spending gap between schools like Alcorn State that are struggling to sustain athletics programs and elite sports schools that are rolling in millions of dollars of revenue.

News is circulating about the growing wealth gap between a few elite, well-endowed colleges and the rest of higher education. A Congressional investigation into endowment growth and hoarding, the fears of budget cuts at state universities as the economy declines, and the new, expensive financial aid plans at many elite schools have added fuel to the story and brought focus to a worrisome picture that has been developing for some time.

[slideshow] The widening wealth gap is also a stark reality in the world of college sports. Just as most of the higher education media attention traditionally has been given to elite colleges and their spending decisions, most of the interest in athletics spending is directed at a small number of big-time football and basketball programs and conferences.

Two weeks ago, the NCAA accused Kelvin Sampson, the basketball coach at Indiana University, of committing five major rules violations involving recruiting and improper phone calls. The NCAA report was harsh in its assessment of the situation, and media coverage of the report was extensive. The media portrayed the NCAA as a serious actor that would come down hard on Indiana if the school didn't take swift action itself. The school responded by getting rid of Sampson last Friday with a $750,000 settlement.

Contrast this with the academic cheating scandal at Florida State University that came to full light last December. Sixty-one players on various sports teams cheated in an online music history class, making this one of the most widespread cases of academic corruption ever publicly disclosed. Media attention to the scandal was limited outside of Florida, and was mostly focused on the fact that FSU wouldn’t be competitive in its football bowl game because the school had suspended 36 players.

Diversity and minority recruitment are hot button words in most four year college admissions offices. There's congratulations when enrollment demographics show greater racial diversity and consternation when minority numbers drop.

But are college admissions office recruitment efforts working? Colleges will, in a knee-jerk fashion, say: yes, look at our racial and ethnic percentages! College access for minorities is a reality here! But how much is minority recruitment in admissions offices really contributing to the diversity of college campuses?

Unfortunately, at some Division I schools, not much. The black-white diversity on many campuses is not always the result of better minority recruitment. It’s often the result of athletics, and in particular, football.

Inside Higher Ed analyzed data from the NCAA and found that at 46 colleges (of the almost 330 colleges that participate in Division I athletics) athletes comprise at least a third of the black male student population. At 96 schools, athletes comprise at least 20 percent. Compare that to the percentage of all male students who are athletes: 3 percent.

University of Phoenix Found Guilty of Securities Fraud, Must Pay $280 Million

A federal jury handed shareholders a major victory on Wednesday over the University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit university in the country. After only two days of deliberations, the jury found that the Apollo Group, the university's parent company, was guilty of securities fraud for withholding crucial information from investors and ordered it to pay approximately $280-million to the shareholders who had sued. In 2004, the company repeatedly failed to disclose in its Security and Exchange Commission filings and in its conference calls with financial analysts the existence of a U.S. Department of Education review that had blasted its student recruiting practices. That report, which found that the university had violated a federal law that bans colleges from compensating admissions officers on the basis of enrollments, became public only after the university reluctantly agreed to a $9.8-million settlement with the Department in which it denied any wrongdoing. The report's findings are also at the center of a separate False Claims Act lawsuit that has been brought against the university by two former admissions officers.

When Louisiana State University coach Les Miles was carried off the field after winning the National Championship game last night, his smile likely reflected more than the pure joy of winning. Miles had already garnered $400,000 in football bonuses for making it to the game. After winning the title,

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.

Santa has some tough decisions to make this Christmas. We've decided to help him out with our own list of who's been naughty and who's been nice this year in higher education.

Let us know who, if anyone, you think should be added to the list…

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.

The professionalization of college athletics is a thorny issue, one that we addressed in a recent blog post on Boston College's current football team. We pointed out that many of the elite players on BC's football team this year, such as star quarterback Matt Ryan, are no longer really students because they have…

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.

Yesterday, Higher Ed Watch unveiled its first "Academic Bowl Championship Series" poll, which ranked the current top teams in college football using academic instead of athletic indicators. In developing the Academic BCS poll, we took advantage of all of the data that is publicly available on college athletes' academic…

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.

At the end of every college football season, there's an uproar about the "Bowl Championship Series" (BCS) formula that decides which teams get to play for the National Championship and in various bowl games. This year is no different-sports commentators are in a tizzy about which teams will…

Note: This post pre-dates Higher Ed Watch's shift to a new publishing system. For the complete original post, including any comments, please click here.