HEADED INTO the final weekend of March Madness, there's no doubt that the young men who play on the nation's top collegiate teams have served their schools well. What's questionable is how well the schools have served them. Too many college athletes are still leaving institutions of higher education without degrees, and that's nothing to cheer about.

A scorecard on graduation rates for the men's teams in the Sweet 16, published March 25 in The Post's Outlook section, showed a dismal graduation rate of 38.5 percent. Using NCAA data on players who entered college between 1996 and 1999, the researchers from the New America Foundation and Education Sector also showed that schools did a particularly poor job of graduating minority students. Georgetown University, which happily made the Final Four, posted poorly with a graduation rate for its basketball players of 47 percent. Contrast that with its overall graduation rate of 93.2 percent and one wonders about the university's priorities. Georgetown also showed some of the worst disparities between white and black men. Though a better picture of school performance emerges if estimates of transfer students are included in the numbers, the problem of poor achievement persists...

To view the scorecard on graduation rates, please click here.

For the complete editorial, please visit The Washington Post website.