So exactly who are you laying blame on here? Is it the coach/school, for not grabbing a grown man by the hand and saying "go to class"? I'm sure you didn't need that to obtain your degree. Are you laying blame on the athlete for using his athletic ability to go to a school he might not have been able to get into if the school couldn't make money off of him?
dude, you're looking like you need some meds. No one said anything about Vince. do you know if Vince is graduating, I don't. get off it. this is a new subject that may be a little to complicated for you.
An athletic program should help promote the core values of the university. bassfly, not really.. Actually, long before I decided where to go to college I was impressed by schools that have their athletes be real students. Even when I thought I might go to UT, I was disturbed by their low rates etc. It is common to think we all care about it because the team isn't good, when in reality the team isn't good BECAUSE we care about it. If we really would put winning above of academics, alumni would pressure for standards to be lowered. But I know many alumni who will not donate a dime to the school if they ever allowed such horrible rates. I just don't undertand the whole... let's not project our valus on the players. If you are going to school you should be interested in graduating, that is the point of college. Not to mention so many of them are getting free rides, I'd rather the free rides go to players that care. LOL, graduation not one of a student's priorities.. wow. And no they aren't all going to the pros
It's 6 years because they had to wait until now to release the data from the '95-'98 entering classes. It's naive to think that they would be dumb enough to calculate it based on 4 years. They know better than that. If I'm not mistaken the old measure was also based on 6 years.
It's the football/basketball factory mentality that has developed. Having a college/university system serve as the minor leagues for football and basketball is not what colleges/universities were designed to do. Many of these "student athletes" (especially the ones playing football and mens basketball) should not be on the campus of a university. It looks like the graduation data is proving this to be accurate. Many are not serious about school (again, see the data) and are taking spots from qualified applicants.
icehouse... I put blame on administrations that allow a coach to have enough power to get people in who are at some schools on average WAY WAY WAY WAY underqualified academically to be at that institution. When you are letting in people that are 400 or more pts SAT wise below the average student and way below the average gpa , it is no wonder they do poorly. . So I think that some blame goes to whoever is deciding to admit people that they know will probably not graduate. It isn't the level of intelligence that is the problem, as much as it is the level compared to the rest at that particular school. Extreme example, If Yale admitted someone with an 820 SAT, and they didn't graduate.. I''d blame Yale because they should have known that was likely to happen If you have a university president that forces the coach to take into account desire to do well in school.. things would change.
If these "student athletes" could go directly to the pros or a well established minor league system, then I'm sure they would. Unfortunately they are forced by the pros to go to a college where their skills can be used to attract revenue for practically nothing (whoa....say 100 slots for basketball and football out of a campus with 50K students). The schools that serve as minor leagues make tons of money off of these players....money that is used to fund other athletic programs that no one would pay to see. Just using VY as an example, do you think he has made a bigger financial impact to his school than you have made to yours (I'm assuming Rice hasn't made $1M because you went there, and that you haven't donated an amount that large).
But again, in a lot of cases, the goal on both sides (the university and the school) is not to graduate. The goal of the school is to make money through it's athletic program. The goal of the student-athlete is often to go to the pros. If you can get an education along the way...cool (that would be the best way to look at it). Considering that I have two degrees and have never made $1M dollars, I don't see why some choosing to go pro over an education is such a bad idea.
The sad thing is, the majority of athletic departments don't even make profits... In the overall multibillion dollar budgets on a university.. the portion made off of athletics is very small
icehouse. and that is why I am putting much of the blame on the school, for having misguided goals for putting that above having some educational integrity. I'm glad my university chancellor and a few others have stepped up to pressure the NCAA to at least tie the number of full rides a school can give to players, to graduation rates. They are going to start being punished, even though the punishment isn't that big.
icehouse. An I've given the ones deciding to go almost a free pass in this discussion.. The rate isn't 40% because 60% of Ut players go pro.. no where near 60% of Ut players end up in the NFL
Ok, so you pretty much admit that the schools are using these "money sports" as marketing for the university as opposed to the students being any kind of "scholar-athletes". At least we can agree on that much. I'm not blaming the athletes themselves. Right now going to Generic State U to play sports is their only option. There's no developed minor leagues like baseball has. My problem lies with the football factories that exist. Your point about Vince Young bringing in more than my presense at Rice is absurd. Universities exist to educate our people. They don't exist to make money off of sports. Hell, why don't universities just set up casinos in their classrooms if all they care about is making money? Why don't universities enlist their hot co-eds to film pornos to sell online to raise money for the university? Your point about Vince Young making money for the university is just stupid and non-relevant. Rice is doing just fine raising money - in fact Rice's endowment is larger than UT Austin's as well as the entire A&M system's endowment....and Rice has 2800 undergrads.
My point about Vince is very relevant. Schools like UT focus on their athletic programs to make money (off of the programs directly, and I'm sure giving is up in national title years such as this one). Universities exist to educate people, but they still need funds to do it. Further, other athletic programs (that people won't pay to see) need funding from somewhere, and big money athletic programs (like football and basketball) help. My point wasn't that Rice was struggling to make money. My point was that the University of Texas has definately received more from VY going there (financially) then VY has received (well, until he either graduates or goes pro and makes millions). You argue that these athletes don't deserve a spot on campus because they aren't graduating, any my point is that they DO because the school is making tons of money off of them. And yes, I think big program schools such as UT are more concerned with winning the national championship than they are about their athletes graduating.
Of course, if you actually run through the numbers it's not all that unreasonable. There are about 20 scholarships per year (as I believe you have 85 total scholarship players). A 40% graduation rate indicates 8 of the 20 graduate. About 4 UT players go to the NFL each year. So that puts us at 12, or a 60% rate. I believe the overall UT graduation rate is 70% or so. So you have about 2 fewer football players graduating than the regular school. Of course, that compares athletes with the average UT student. I've venture to guess if you broke down UT students by average GPA/SAT/etc, the ones that got in with similar credentials as the athletes would have similar graduation rates, while the top-2%ers would have a much higher graduation rate. So, the graduation rate would essentially be in line with other students of that caliber. All this would show is that: (1) Lower end students in terms of GPA/SAT/etc have lower graduation rates (2) The football program tends to have more of those students than honor students Big deal. A state school will always have a lower graduation rate than private institutions because they allow a wider range of people in and are substantially cheaper. I think a more interesting study would be the differential of a school's athlete graduation rate in comparison to it's regular graduation rate, and how that compares to other schools.
Major, you can't simply exclude the players who go pro from the data. These players futher prove the point that schools are nothing more than football factories with no focus on graduating players. Mack typically keeps his players around for all of their playing years, anyhow (4 to 6 years like Scaife...), so that further nullifies your point.
Why not, especially if their goal was to go pro and play the gave they love while making millions? I would think the average pro player makes more than I do with my two degrees. Is the goal of the university to help you obtain a piece of paper, or help you get established to obtain income in the future? Whose financial future looks brighter...Roy Williams or the student that graduated with a degree in basket weaving and can't find a job?
Question for the Rice Alumn. Are there as many open book test and take home test now as when my relatives went there in the 80's and 90's. I just remember them telling me that cheating was rampant back then.
There is an honor code system - cheating is NOT rampant at Rice. The students know that they will be expelled if they cheat, and also if they fail to report cheating. If fact, several of our top football players got the boot a couple of years ago when they were caught cheating. (ya think that would happen at Generic State U?) Students are much more responsible due to the Rice system in my opinion. This is another subject for another thread, though. edit: I will also add that I've found it odd that many of my A&M and UT buddies actually BRAG about how they cheated in college, where I would NEVER hear that from Rice students.
