I got a bunch of really good comments to yesterday’s post about athletes and attitudes toward education. Unfortunately, yesterday was also a stay-at-home-with-SteelyKid day, and she spent a lot of time demanding to be held or otherwise catered to, so I didn’t have a chance to respond. I’d like to correct that today by responding to the main threads of argument in those comments.
Taking these in no particular order, Moshe writes:
Not sure there is a serious argument here, athletes are different in so many ways, but I’ll bite – here is another difference. Some students and athletes have their head screwed on right, and they really are interested in obtaining a good education. In most schools such students will find an encouraging environment, but I expect that in most division 1 schools (like the university of Texas where I tutored athletes for a few years), athletes will find that they were hired to do a job, and time consuming hobbies are not what they are paid to do with their time.
That’s a fair point. But how is this different than a student who has to work a regular job to pay the tuition bill? If we’re going to be down on athletes because sports is a drain on their time, should we also be down on “non-traditional” students who have jobs and families?
In fact, one of the very best students I’ve worked with was a “non-traditional” student. He was several years older than his classmates, and was paying his bills by waiting tables at at least two different restaurants in the area. On one of the few occasions when he missed class, I returned a homework assignment to him when I went to happy hour at one of those places.
He had vastly more demands on his time than the other students, but he was much better about managing his time and resources than the other students in the class. He showed up to almost every class, and turned in every single assignment, when many of his classmates with far less excuse missed classes and failed to turn in homework on a regular basis.
While I agree that sports are a big time sink, students who are sufficiently committed can make it work. Part of what inspired yesterday’s post was the discussion surrounding Myron Rolle of Florida State, who plays football and is a candidate for a Rhodes Scholarship. If he can rack up the grades to be a Rhodes Scholar while playing football at Florida State, I don’t see how you can argue that sports are an insuperable obstacle to academic success.
Another similar argument is that athletes are the recipients of special benefits. As Jim Thomerson puts it:
If we compare two entering students, both not quite ready, both just interested in a future job, the difference between the athelete and the non athelete is that the institution will make a much greater effort to retain the athelete than it will for the non athelete. For one thing, the institution has a greater investment in the athelete than it does in a similar non athelate. That investment is jepordized if the athelete does not maintain academic elegiability.
That’s true. But couldn’t you just as well turn this around and argue that we’re doing a disservice to the rest of the student body, by not giving them the support they need to succeed?
I’ve talked about this before, in the context of graduation rates. Every year we get dozens of hand-wringing pieces about the poor graduation rates of football and basketball players at Division I schools, but if you compare the graduation rate for the mostly African-American students on those teams to their demographic peers, the athletic graduation rates don’t look so bad any more.
The real scandal isn’t that the graduation rate for black male athletes is low, the scandal is that the graduation rate for black male students is low.
The other main thread of argument has to do with allocation of resources. As someone signing their comment “C” says:
More damaging to the institution, though, is the way the sports become the focus. A year or two ago, my state had a budget crisis such that the university was forced to cut academic assets (e.g. staffing, library hours). However, the football coach wanted a new stadium, so the state legislators banded together to get the money to build it.
I get that a lot of people like sports. But a televisable sport costs a lot of money, that only a rare few universities make back from the sport itself. I guess I’m frustrated that administrators prefer skyboxes to being in charge of an excellent learning institution.
This is a tough one, because it gets into murky questions of budgeting. The key question is whether it would’ve been possible to get that same money for something else. That is, would the same money have been available for academic programs?
If the choice is between a $10 million donation toward a new football stadium and a $10 million donation to the physics department, then it’s obviously foolish to build the stadium. If the choice is between $10 million for a new stadium and nothing, it’s not clear that the school,shouldn’t take the money.
Of course, it’s not clear that they should take the money, either. The comment by Sparky Clarkson makes the “shouldn’t” case, with a link that’s worth looking at.
Finally, a number of people made analogies between athletes and “legacies,” the under-qualified children of alumni, preferably wealthy ones. I have only a cynical comment to make about this: the analogy breaks down on financial grounds. Athletes cost money, in the form of scholarships and additional support resources. Legacies are generally paying full tuition. They’re not subsidized by other students, they’re subsidizing other students.
I can’t swear that I’ll be any better today about responding to comments– I’ve got a doctor’s appointment and a huge pile of manuscript revisions to get through– but it’s been an interesting discussion so far, and I hope to continue it.
“But how is this different than a student who has to work a regular job to pay the tuition bill?”
I can’t speak for the original poster, but I think the point is that in the case of a student athlete, their ’employer’ is the school itself. It’s simply not true for some subset of college students that they are there to play football AND be in school. But it is true for your working student, who knows that they’re there to be in school but that they’re also going to have to pay the bills.
For a student who has to work to pay tuition, there’s a tension — between what they need and want to do, between their employer and their academic requirements. But when a school has a policy of supporting certain students because they do a job, and not because they fulfill academic requirements, then parts of that tension evaporate. Individual professors and members of the community may say, “You’re here to learn, not to play,” but the rest of the system tells them otherwise, and they know that.
This is mere anecdotal information. Yesterday I did the paperwork to expel from our high school a student from my 11th grade Anatomy & Physiology class. He punched another student in the face hard enough to leave a vivid mark, and throttled the other student, fingers around neck, and would not stop and leave the classroom when I repeated my direct order. The offender of what I consider criminal Assault and Battery was our top Football star.
The war between jocks and geeks is not usually so overt. And, of course, there are people who are both, such as Chad, my son, and wasn’t there a NFL football player with a PhD once?
Regarding “legacies” (of which I will reiterate my belief that the alumni status of relatives is immaterial at most schools, and the real class of these students is simply “ultra wealthy”) I think the direction of your argument has changed to exclude them as a topic. Yesterday you were comparing athletes to students who are not serious about education. In this comparison, the analogy to “legacy”/”ultra wealthy” is completely appropriate since the not serious students are not presumed to be scholarship students either.
Today’s post completely changed the discussion to a more traditional “athletics as a job” and “allocation of resources” discussion. This change is fine and interesting, but does not seem particularly related to yesterday’s post.
As an aside about athletes, at the division I school where I did my graduate work, scholarship athletes were prevented from majoring in most sciences because the workload (particularly the laboratories) took up too much of their time. They could get away with taking a pre-med track, but anything beyond that was strictly prohibited.
Regarding “legacies” (of which I will reiterate my belief that the alumni status of relatives is immaterial at most schools, and the real class of these students is simply “ultra wealthy”) I think the direction of your argument has changed to exclude them as a topic. Yesterday you were comparing athletes to students who are not serious about education. In this comparison, the analogy to “legacy”/”ultra wealthy” is completely appropriate since the not serious students are not presumed to be scholarship students either.
Today’s post completely changed the discussion to a more traditional “athletics as a job” and “allocation of resources” discussion. This change is fine and interesting, but does not seem particularly related to yesterday’s post.
The attitude question is still there. That’s the point of the Myron Rolle example– students who are serious about academics can succeed and even excel while being athletes.
Anecdotally, my experience has been that our best students tend to have more going on than just academics– they’re active in sports, or student clubs, or Greek organizations, or community service, and so forth. The students I’ve had the most trouble with have generally not been involved with anything else.
This isn’t an iron rule– the single best student we’ve had in my time here was a Physics/Math double major, and didn’t really do much else. In general, though, the strongest students we have tend to do more than just academics.
To append an additional anecdote, in the hopes of reaching data status, my own experience in college was that playing rugby was actually good for me– much better than you would’ve thought given the amount of drinking involved. I suffered a catastrophic failure of motivation every semester when rugby season ended, and I no longer had those time commitments to structure my days and weeks around.
The war between jocks and geeks is not usually so overt. And, of course, there are people who are both, such as Chad, my son, and wasn’t there a NFL football player with a PhD once?
I had my wisdom teeth removed by an oral surgeon who played football at Notre Dame and was a first-round draft pick for the 49ers. I guess it takes some real strength to yank those impacted molars out! Here’s a link to a story about him: http://www.boston.com/news/daily/15/mcafee.htm
You know, I don’t think this is an either-or issue. Two separate factors keep scholastic achievement by athletes down.
1. Elite athletes are admitted with academic aptitude (and test scores) far below what would be acceptable for other students.
2. The training and play time required to perform at an elite level take a lot of time, as much as a part-time job in most cases.
It’s not really surprising that only a few highly capable student-athletes are able to overcome both of these problems, and perform well as students.
That said, I don’t think we can hope to rip it all down and build anew. The sports teams and culture are just too entrenched; we must be content to nibble around the edges of the problem.
As I understand it, there have already been attempts to fix the first problem (academic aptitude) with eligibility requirements. That has pretty much failed; the bars are set very low, and even really marginal students are able to scrape by, particularly with the tutorial assistance that is routinely provided to athletes.
But I think that second factor (time) might be more fixable. If the athletes have too little time, let them take longer. Not four years, but six or even eight. Let them play while being in effect part-time students, and let them keep playing long enough to finish respectable courses of study at a slower pace.
Just to clarify, my intention was not to be “down on athletes”, I spent quite a bit of time with many athletes and I have enormous sympathy for their impossible position in a corrupt system. Yes, some very talented people will succeed despite a system that actively discourages them, I remember cases like that as well, but in the bigger scheme of things this is statistically insignificant.
One of the arguments to rationalize college sports is that is provides athletes a chance for a good education. Like many of the good reasons to have college sports, this is probably correct in most places, but not in division 1 football programs, and other such programs where the original intentions of sports on campus are by now completely unrecognizable.
So, as I commented before, my argument is not against college sports as such, or against athletes, the argument is against having a professional sports team embedded in the campus, it has no place there. One way to see its corrupting influence is to look at the life of the athletes themselves. The pretense of the student-athlete status is harming them, because that’s an impossible thing to be. I’d be happier if they were given market-value salaries for their work, and use some of it to get an education after their career is over, which for most of them is around graduation time.
If the athletes have too little time, let them take longer. Not four years, but six or even eight. Let them play while being in effect part-time students, and let them keep playing long enough to finish respectable courses of study at a slower pace.
Currently, they have five — the “redshirt” year allows student athletes to attend college and practice with their team for up to five years, but they may only play on the team during competitions for four. Usually students will redshirt their freshman year, but that time is spent practicing extensively and ‘bulking up’ to be more competitive when they begin to play in real games.
But I think that second factor (time) might be more fixable. If the athletes have too little time, let them take longer. Not four years, but six or even eight. Let them play while being in effect part-time students, and let them keep playing long enough to finish respectable courses of study at a slower pace.
Lots of people have made this suggestion, in various forms. I have yet to hear a really good argument against it.
One of the arguments to rationalize college sports is that is provides athletes a chance for a good education. Like many of the good reasons to have college sports, this is probably correct in most places, but not in division 1 football programs, and other such programs where the original intentions of sports on campus are by now completely unrecognizable.
The qualifier is important, here, because the number of athletes for whom sports are really counter-productive is actually pretty small, relative to the total. The problem is really with Division I football and Division I men’s basketball, and even there, not all the schools are corrupted to a problematic extent.
Anecdotally, my experience has been that our best students tend to have more going on than just academics– they’re active in sports, or student clubs, or Greek organizations, or community service, and so forth. The students I’ve had the most trouble with have generally not been involved with anything else.
There is a saying which covers this tendency: If you want something done, give it to a busy person.
And I’d say it’s not surprising that non-traditional students tend to do better than those going straight from high school to college. You probably have a lower fraction of geniuses in the former group, but the latter also includes those who are partying on their parents’ money. If you have to pay your own way through college, of course you are going to take it seriously.
Chad, agreed, the number of programs with the well-known excesses (exploitation of athletes being only one of them) is relatively small. Some rational way of limiting the amounts of money involved, and making the programs financially viable and accountable, will go a long way towards resolving the issue. Basically, college sports is a good thing, but there is no reason it should be devoted to training athletes for the major sports leagues. If they want a minor league, they can fund one, pay the athletes market value, and stop pretending they are something other than professional athletes.
Johan Larson@6
I’d add a third factor. Elite athletes in “big name” sports don’t necessarily have to make any effort in their classes unless they actually want to.
There isn’t anything in particular keeping those elite athletes who are interested in getting some sort of education from doing so. But those who aren’t interested can often get away with not making any effort.
Commenting on the comment
If we compare two entering students, both not quite ready, both just interested in a future job, the difference between the athelete and the non athelete is that the institution will make a much greater effort to retain the athelete than it will for the non athelete.
rather than your comment about it …
That might be true at state schools, but I think it is becoming less true every year. At my CC, I think we now have in place an variety of facilities and tools for providing academic support for our students that probably matches what we (and even div I schools) offer their athletes. The only difference might be that athletes are forced to use their academic resources, at least in the sense that they show up there, while regular students are not. And didn’t Florida State get a shout out in IHE about their minority support program? Yeah, a search turns up
http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/21/gradrates
But Chad, has it ever been true that retention only focuses on athletes at private schools? My understanding is that retention is a HIGH priority because of the huge investment in every one of your students. If one drops out, that is an empty seat and an empty dorm room that is not easily filled by a junior transferring in from a CC. Could you blog about what Williams and Union do to support regular students and improve retention? We in the public sector might learn something.
I’m not as sanguine as Moshe in #11. Lets not confuse “well known” excesses with the more common run-of-the-mill exploitation that takes place. The standard for the APR in the NCAA is not very high, yet some schools have lost as many as a half-dozen football scholarships due to a failure to meet it on a continuing basis. Those get attention, but the rest will regularly lose a significant fraction of their recruits early in their college career.
I have long advocated a rule that would forbid freshman competition unless the student athlete has actually earned 24 semester hours of regular college courses (1/5 of what is needed to graduate) before the start of the competition season. Then give them four years of eligibility after that, and a medical red-shirt if needed. This would eliminate the most common form of exploitation, where a freshman football player is used up and discarded before he even earns a grade in a college course (or gets famous and quits, like at Ohio State), but would not affect kids like Rolle.
Say, could I get a response, in the context of my comment on the other post, to this question:
Is there hope for a C student who wants to be an academic?
Depends why you’re getting Cs.
Is there hope for a C student who wants to be an academic?
It depends on how far along you are, and why you’re getting C’s.
To work in academia, you’ll need an advanced degree, and if you’re a senior with a C average in your major, you won’t get into grad school. Or, at least, you won’t get into a grad school that will put you in a competitive position.
If you’re a sophomore, a few early C’s won’t hold you back. Just make sure you do well in the upper-division courses in your major, and get to know some faculty members who can write you good letters of recommendation.
If you are a senior (or the equivalent), you might want to think about spending another year picking up some classes in your major field so as to show that you really can do good work. I realize that’s potentially a hardship financially, though.
Alternatively, get a job doing something related to the degree area, and prove that you’re competent through work experience. That might outweigh shaky grades.
@#17
I’m a senior and I have a C average in Mathematics, but I do not wish to pursue that. I want to do Linguistics, but TAMU only offers that as a minor. I have an A in every Linguistics class but one (I got a B in History of English).