the AD weighs in on academics (tl;dr)

7,423 Views | 68 Replies | Last: 12 yr ago by Oski87
UrsaMajor
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No. We should see results starting no later than 2017, but realistically by 2015.
The comment earlier about why wait 7 years misses the point that the problem surfaced later. In Tedford's first couple of years the APR (the only stat that he had control over) was excellent--hovering at or near 1000. It was starting in the middle of his tenure that things began to decline. One of the reasons for Braun's dismissal was his lack of attention to academics--especially with "star" players.

I do think that institutional culture plays a role. Faculty who are hostile to athletics can submarine players in small ways (refusal to give a make-up for a mid-term held while the player is on a road trip, for instance). Unless there is a university-wide policy that prohibits such things, there will always be trouble. Most importantly, however, the expectations need to be set early and held to consistently. Montgomery does it; Tedford didn't. Will Dykes? We have to wait and see.

All of the above does not absolve the Athletic Director from responsibility, however. I do agree that a school-wide task force is an excellent step. We'll see where that leads.
kcbear
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At my university the Faculty Athletic Committee spends one meeting every semester going over student-athlete progress. We get an accounting of every athlete who is not doing well (usually basketball players) and ask what the coaches are doing about it. We make suggestions and report to the faculty. Has this been happening at Cal?
SanseiBear
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Thanks for the clarification, boredom, and I totally agree with you.
gobears725
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Ace4eVer;842210411 said:

I hate the "pursue other interests" line. It sounds like we're the only school in the country that has players heading to the NFL early, when thats clearly not the case. It'd be fine if we were holding to our own standard of graduation, but when you come in last relative to every other BCS school it's just another excuse.

I also like how she noted that they flagged this 2 years ago. Which means that we won't really see results until about 2021. That's great, except that our APR was plummeting this whole time and is a good indicator of GSR. I can't believe that Cal was waiting on this report due to it "lagging" either. I think someone at the university should be able to get a rough number of students who are graduating, who truly intend to graduate, and who don't care about graduating. Being last might be a surprise, but the percentage shouldn't be.

I'm pretty disappointed in this email. It is better than going silent, but again come the excuses. If the APR declines again we need a new approach.



If an athlete leaves in good standing, they arent counted against the GSR which means that when our guys go pro, theyre not leaving in good standing. She uses this as an excuse and its about as lame as it gets
GB54
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gobears725;842210533 said:

If an athlete leaves in good standing, they arent counted against the GSR which means that when our guys go pro, theyre not leaving in good standing. She uses this as an excuse and its about as lame as it gets


Triply lame: she doesn't understand the rules, or she is hopelessly trying to spin it and she begs a question as to why a "football factory" such as we are sucks at football.
gobears725
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GB54;842210546 said:

Triply lame: she doesn't understand the rules, or she is hopelessly trying to spin it and she begs a question as to why a "football factory" such as we are sucks at football.


if she doesnt understand the rules of how GSR or APR work, then shes about as incompetent as it gets or basically she was trying to spin it, use it as an excuse and hope no one would catch on to it. Either way when a high ranking visible person starts acting this way, i just see it as the writing on the wall.
GB54
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gobears725;842210567 said:

if she doesnt understand the rules of how GSR or APR work, then shes about as incompetent as it gets or basically she was trying to spin it, use it as an excuse and hope no one would catch on to it. Either way when a high ranking visible person starts acting this way, i just see it as the writing on the wall.


When your a Chancellor the least you hear about your athletic department the better. It means there aren't any scandals, money problems or disgruntled alumni bitching about losing. Pretty soon Dirks is going to realize that far too much of his time is being spent on fire fighting about graduation rates, financing of the stadium, disgruntled faculty and staff, and bad publicity, all traceable to the AD.
beelzebear
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GB54;842210546 said:

Triply lame: she doesn't understand the rules, or she is hopelessly trying to spin it and she begs a question as to why a "football factory" such as we are sucks at football.


gobears725;842210567 said:

if she doesnt understand the rules of how GSR or APR work, then shes about as incompetent as it gets or basically she was trying to spin it, use it as an excuse and hope no one would catch on to it. Either way when a high ranking visible person starts acting this way, i just see it as the writing on the wall.


Can anyone explain either GSR or APR, in a concise manner? Cliff notes?
1979bear
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Often the politically correct hire is good for short term kudos with those want to be trendy--but you end up paying dearly for the trendiness.
gobears725
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beelzebear;842210573 said:

Can anyone explain either GSR or APR, in a concise manner? Cliff notes?


http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/sdsu/genrel/auto_pdf/what-is-grad-success-rate.pdf

heres a pretty good/short one for GSR. What it doesnt mention is that when an athlete leaves the school in good standing, they arent counted against the school. good standing is a 2.6 gpa for transfers i believe , so i imagine that it is similar for those leaving for the pros.

I dont have anything for APR and APR is a little more complicated and i dont feel like looking it up. Either way though, its her job to know these things. for both, im pretty sure its as simple as "google search APR NCAA" in my opinion she knows how its calculated, im pretty sure that she was trying to pass it off as an excuse, ignorantly thinking that no one would notice
beelzebear
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1979bear;842210576 said:

Often the politically correct hire is good for short term kudos with those want to be trendy--but you end up paying dearly for the trendiness.


Why was SB a PC hire? Because she's qualified? Have you looked at her resume. Also she got a few things done that no man could get done at Cal, like facilities and CMS. Frankly you have to be a bit fearless to take that on, as history clearly shows given the lawsuits, tree sitters, and City of Berkeley.

I still content hiring Monty was not only a stroke of genius but a ginormus wedgies on Furd, especially when you look at the current state of Furd hoops. 18 years of glory under Monty...and Cal hires him. Not many AD could figure that one out, let alone pull it off.

...and you're whining because Sandy Barbour is a women? Don't be a jackass.
1979bear
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I didn't say that. You are a brave internet name caller. Make sure to put straws and napkins in the drive thru bags.
gobears725
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beelzebear;842210584 said:

Why was SB a PC hire? Because she's qualified? Have you looked at her resume. Also she got a few things done that no man could get done at Cal, like facilities and CMS. Frankly you have to be a bit fearless to take that on, as history clearly shows given the lawsuits, tree sitters, and City of Berkeley.

I still content hiring Monty was not only a stroke of genius but a ginormus wedgies on Furd, especially when you look at the current state of Furd hoops. 18 years of glory under Monty...and Cal hires him. Not many AD could figure that one out, let alone pull it off.

...and you're whining because Sandy Barbour is a women? Don't be a jackass.


Im not the type of person to deny that Sandy hasnt had some pretty remarkable accomplishments in her tenure but you cant ignore the flip side of some of the bad things she has done as well. I consider her in that sense to be very similar to Tedford. Did a lot of good things, but some of the things where she has completely dropped the ball just makes me kind of go wowwww. so stupid. I think the writing is on the wall. I dont hate Barbour but i think that this last thing with the academics and her excuses with it just makes her really lose a lot of credibility. Lets just say that she hasnt had a good year. Her Dykes hiring looks like completely a dud and she went on record saying that she wanted Dykes because she was sold on his interview, in the process completely ignoring her search firm that she hired, that told her that we should hire Gary Andersen.
1979bear
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beelzebear;842210584 said:

Why was SB a PC hire? Because she's qualified? Have you looked at her resume. Also she got a few things done that no man could get done at Cal, like facilities and CMS. Frankly you have to be a bit fearless to take that on, as history clearly shows given the lawsuits, tree sitters, and City of Berkeley.

I still content hiring Monty was not only a stroke of genius but a ginormus wedgies on Furd, especially when you look at the current state of Furd hoops. 18 years of glory under Monty...and Cal hires him. Not many AD could figure that one out, let alone pull it off.

...and you're whining because Sandy Barbour is a women? Don't be a jackass.


I'd hire Andrea Merkel to be the AD over Barbour. Barbour's gender doesn't matter. She is not good at what she does. Minor sports are NOT what the AD is supposed to be most concerned with.
dimitrig
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GoBears58;842210328 said:


If that means the football and basketball teams suck then so be it.

bollocks. if ucla and Michigan can graduate their football players than so should we.



I didn't mean to say we HAVE to suck. What I am saying is that we need to place an emphasis on academics first and foremost. Being dead last is really, really embarrassing!

However, keep in mind that UCLA and Michigan (and Stanford) have their pick of players - at least more than Cal does. Cal is often left with the the players higher profile schools did not want. In order to stay competitive we gamble more on students who barely qualify academically - students that schools like Stanford and UCLA passed over. We need to make sure that we gamble more often on kids who can cut it in the classroom and our recruiting should reflect that. There is too much emphasis on turning athletes into scholars rather than building a program which finds scholars who were overlooked athletes.
HaasBear04
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Sandy doesn't get credit for the facilities and the new half stadium until the impending financial armageddon is averted. Anybody can run up a gigantic credit card bill.
Jeff82
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wifeisafurd;842210333 said:

The Furd football distribution of majors is almost identical to that of the student body. And everyone graduates from there (they are thinking about re-instituting the D grade), but the football players have higher GPAs than the average student. So how do they move their football students along again relative to the student body? If anything, it seems like Cal football players are steered away from hard majors like engineering. We have a disproportionate number of American Studies majors who don't graduate. Now American Studies is a real major (my relative, a Dean at another UC, in fact says its a well regarded program). But why is this the football player major? And why should football players or any other student-athletes get brakes (other than tutoring if needed) except for scheduling issues due to travel for team play? Sorry, not buying. Yes, its not ASU or the SEC, but we seem to be able to have really good students in the other sports and do well in those sports. Are you telling me academic schools like Duke, Michigan, Notre Dame, UCLA, Virgina, Texas, etc. have football or basketball track majors that Cal doesn't?


My understanding is that this is a popular major for athletes because it is interdisciplinary, i.e. you can take courses in many different departments that qualify for this major. Ergo, majoring in American Studies makes it easier for athletes to set up course schedules around their practice and playing schedules. Athletes who have other majors can run into problems, for example the upper division Bus Ad class that two golfers were forced to drop, because the professor would not permit them to miss class to play in one of the regularly scheduled tournaments.

As a side note, I think it's unfortunate for athletes that Cal switched from the quarter system to semesters. Under quarters, athletes had more ability to take lighter loads in season (fall quarter for football, winter quarter for basketball, spring quarter for baseball and track, etc.). I suspect that's tougher to do with semesters, which is why so many athletes end up having to go to summer school all the time they're here.

It may be that in order to be competitive in football and basketball, we have to give most players the ability to redshirt for academic reasons, as Coach Desimone does for golfers who want to go to Haas. That gives them a year to take their toughest classes.
beelzebear
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1979bear;842210576 said:

Often the politically correct hire is good for short term kudos with those want to be trendy--but you end up paying dearly for the trendiness.


1979bear;842210588 said:

I didn't say that. You are a brave internet name caller. Make sure to put straws and napkins in the drive thru bags.


Why don't you just say it, that you think SB was a PC hire because she's a woman. Then you can get your foot past your mouth and down your gullet.

Seriously, is there any other way to read your statement?
Ace4eVer
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beelzebear;842210573 said:

Can anyone explain either GSR or APR, in a concise manner? Cliff notes?


gobears725 got GSR so here's some info on APR:

"The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates."

Basically, people weren't figuring out that kids weren't graduating early enough so they wanted a more current indicator. The scoring is that each schollied student gets 1 point for being in school and 1 point for being academically eligible. So, kids that leave the team but stay in school don't affect our numbers. Kids who stay in school and work back towards eligibility only hurt half as much as kids who drop out completely. Walk-ons don't count until they earn a scholly.

Regardless of how its done, I really doubt that the numbers are that big of a surprise to anyone which is why I hate that she's acting like its only something we discovered. Somebody should be keeping an eye on these numbers since it might affect (ha!) our post-season as early as next year.
SanseiBear
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gobears725;842210603 said:

....Her Dykes hiring looks like completely a dud and she went on record saying that she wanted Dykes because she was sold on his interview, in the process completely ignoring her search firm that she hired, that told her that we should hire Gary Andersen.


about the search firm's recommendation.
beelzebear
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gobears725;842210603 said:

Im not the type of person to deny that Sandy hasnt had some pretty remarkable accomplishments in her tenure but you cant ignore the flip side of some of the bad things she has done as well. I consider her in that sense to be very similar to Tedford. Did a lot of good things, but some of the things where she has completely dropped the ball just makes me kind of go wowwww. so stupid. I think the writing is on the wall. I dont hate Barbour but i think that this last thing with the academics and her excuses with it just makes her really lose a lot of credibility. Lets just say that she hasnt had a good year. Her Dykes hiring looks like completely a dud and she went on record saying that she wanted Dykes because she was sold on his interview, in the process completely ignoring her search firm that she hired, that told her that we should hire Gary Andersen.


Unfortunately we won't know if Dykes was a good hire until next season. I agree it looks bad but there are circumstances. Any way, yes the academic issues are a cause for concern but the question is if they're systematic to Cal or specific to each program (FB MBB). Looks systematic to me and that will take some doing to address and isn't completely on her, but it is on her to fix it if she wants to keep her job. (I agree on that.)

So here's the question I'd ask about SB's tenure: are Cal athletics better on the whole before or after her hire? I'd say FB and the GSR/APR are worse off but on the whole, facilities, general "health", winning, things are better. MBB, the other revenue sport, is also positioned very well. Swimming, golf, soccer, softball are all doing well.
beelzebear
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gobears725;842210578 said:

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/sdsu/genrel/auto_pdf/what-is-grad-success-rate.pdf

heres a pretty good/short one for GSR. What it doesnt mention is that when an athlete leaves the school in good standing, they arent counted against the school. good standing is a 2.6 gpa for transfers i believe , so i imagine that it is similar for those leaving for the pros.

I dont have anything for APR and APR is a little more complicated and i dont feel like looking it up. Either way though, its her job to know these things. for both, im pretty sure its as simple as "google search APR NCAA" in my opinion she knows how its calculated, im pretty sure that she was trying to pass it off as an excuse, ignorantly thinking that no one would notice


Ace4eVer;842210644 said:

gobears725 got GSR so here's some info on APR:

"The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates."

Basically, people weren't figuring out that kids weren't graduating early enough so they wanted a more current indicator. The scoring is that each schollied student gets 1 point for being in school and 1 point for being academically eligible. So, kids that leave the team but stay in school don't affect our numbers. Kids who stay in school and work back towards eligibility only hurt half as much as kids who drop out completely. Walk-ons don't count until they earn a scholly.

Regardless of how its done, I really doubt that the numbers are that big of a surprise to anyone which is why I hate that she's acting like its only something we discovered. Somebody should be keeping an eye on these numbers since it might affect (ha!) our post-season as early as next year.


Thanks both for the summary. I think some heavy oversight in likely. Cal is a tough place to go to school, but it also teaches other "life skills" like how to skirt things, dodge the system as best you can but also what you can't dodge. Since college is still school, the desire to dodge is innate to most students on some level.
gobears725
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yea sansei, its been reported on a few of the pay sites who the search firm recommended.

beezle,

I have two problems with Sandy. one was her handling of the baseball/rugby situation which i think was a money grab. it showed a very reactive instead of proactive approach to fundraising. had the programs been more proactive in their fundraising efforts, she would have never had to resort to threats to get the necessary funding for those programs. overall the health of those programs are now better off, but i really disagree with how she went about that.

Her Montgomery hire was a great hire and secured the basketball program for many years to come but as brilliant as the Monty hire was, shes been equally as incompetent on the football side, between the stadium funding, tedford contract extensions, Academic problems and now looking like a bad hire in dykes(which like you say we dont know yet, but looks scary bad) ill just say that things arent looking good for her and the pressure definetly building
GMP
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gobears725;842210658 said:

yea sansei, its been reported on a few of the pay sites who the search firm recommended.

beezle,

I have two problems with Sandy. one was her handling of the baseball/rugby situation which i think was a money grab. it showed a very reactive instead of proactive approach to fundraising. had the programs been more proactive in their fundraising efforts, she would have never had to resort to threats to get the necessary funding for those programs. overall the health of those programs are now better off, but i really disagree with how she went about that.

Her Montgomery hire was a great hire and secured the basketball program for many years to come but as brilliant as the Monty hire was, shes been equally as incompetent on the football side, between the stadium funding, tedford contract extensions, Academic problems and now looking like a bad hire in dykes(which like you say we dont know yet, but looks scary bad)



Didn't Andersen publicly turn us down before going to Wisconsin?
ncbears
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It is not just football and mens basketball that are problems - don't forget softball has a pretty bad GSR as well, I believe.
gobears725
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grandmastapoop;842210659 said:

Didn't Andersen publicly turn us down before going to Wisconsin?


if my memory serves me right. we interviewed and never offered because she liked dykes so much after his interview. she liked dykes so much that she wouldnt interview Chris Peterson. but granted CP was kind of playing the cold, hot game with us and i dont think he was ever really interested in us but he is probably one of the top 10 coaches in college football. perhaps it says a lot about dykes, but i guess heres to hoping that her judgment wasnt way off on that one
okaydo
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CalWBBFan
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Golden One;842210278 said:

Barbour is too damned infatuated with the minor sports, such as lacrosse, women's tennis, volleyball, and women's water polo. Seems like she is continuously talking about their championships, etc. She needs to put more focus and emphasis on football and men's basketball. Those are the only two that count in terms as sustainability of the entire athletic department. One Rose Bowl means more than 100 national championships in the minor sports. Ultimately, her success or failure hinges on the success of those two programs.


"Minor" to you, but not to the young people who play those sports....seem to be particularly fond of calling women's sports "minor." Creating a robust educational institution is about more than football. Obviously it's a cash cow (along with men's basketball)--I recognize that, but to continually demote women's athletics as unworthy is short-sited and mean-spirited.

We should take pride in all our athletic successes as we do in other areas where are students achieve. I'm all for improving our football team's GPA and their success on the field but does that formula require denigrating and devaluing others sports? I think not. The two are NOT mutually exclusive except, perhaps, in your mind.
Golden One
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You can get off your soap box, now. I have never denigrated the minor sports. Whether you like it or not, they are not relevant to the financial success of the athletic department. It seems to me that the athletic director at a major university needs to recognize that the majority of her attention and effort must focus on success in football and men's basketball, since they pay all the bills. Barbour doesn't act that way.
gobears725
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CalWBBFan;842210729 said:

"Minor" to you, but not to the young people who play those sports....seem to be particularly fond of calling women's sports "minor." Creating a robust educational institution is about more than football. Obviously it's a cash cow (along with men's basketball)--I recognize that, but to continually demote women's athletics as unworthy is short-sited and mean-spirited.

We should take pride in all our athletic successes as we do in other areas where are students achieve. I'm all for improving our football team's GPA and their success on the field but does that formula require denigrating and devaluing others sports? I think not. The two are NOT mutually exclusive except, perhaps, in your mind.



ummm yea his post wasnt mean spirited at all and had very little to do with devaluing womens sports. he was simply naming off a bunch of sports that arent revenue sports. the only post that was mean spirited was your response.
beelzebear
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Golden One;842210739 said:

You can get off your soap box, now. I have never denigrated the minor sports. Whether you like it or not, they are not relevant to the financial success of the athletic department. It seems to me that the athletic director at a major university needs to recognize that the majority of her attention and effort must focus on success in football and men's basketball, since they pay all the bills. Barbour doesn't act that way.


Seems to me, SB clearly recognized that football and MBB pay the bills. Why else would she go through all the hassle of SAPHC/CMS? If she didn't recognize FB was important, she would have said no and pulled a Bockrath. She also hired Monty, a great hire.

Seriously, SB puts her rep on a $500mil improvement and yet she didn't recognizing FB is important? That's just silly and defies simple logic.
gobears725
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beelzebear;842210744 said:

Seems to me, SB clearly recognized that football and MBB pay the bills. Why else would she go through all the hassle of SAPHC/CMS? If she didn't recognize FB was important, she would have said no and pulled a Bockrath. She also hired Monty, a great hire.

Seriously, SB puts her rep on a $500mil improvement and yet she didn't recognizing FB is important? That's just silly and defies simple logic.


i agree, i think Sandy thinks that football is important but she just hasnt made a lot of good decisions for the future of the program.

but i guess some arent entirely her fault.
who would have thought Tedford would burn out and torpedo the program? Maybe drunkoski.
Who'd have thought Dykes would have this bad of a first season?
not me, not from everything i read on him and tony

the funding thing though. i feel like there would have had to have been other alternatives. but honestly i think the program will figure out a way to survive through it.
XXXBEAR
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GB54;842210375 said:

It doesn't but the comparisons of football and basketball to other sports is also not helpful. Who plays the other sports? A lot are suburban kids with good academic profiles who use this and their sport to get a quality education. I doubt that entering students in volleyball, soccer, gymnastics etc have a combined SAT verbal and math of 1000 and come from under performing schools but have academic profiles closer to the student body at large. The reason football and basketball players don't do as well is because there is a large gap between their academic preparation and performance and the rest of the student body


They were too busy raising money for the new stadium. Barbour knew about it (just like Obama knew about bugging Merkel). Barbour, like all the coaches , get weekly emails from both the compliance officer and the head tutor. Every Cal coach does. Tedford knew, Barbour knew, and they just swept it under the rug. Didn't you see Tedford "suspend" Maynard? but it was too late...

Barbour knew and did nothing, and I am disgusted...
Intermezzo
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UrsaMajor;842210438 said:

In Tedford's first couple of years the APR (the only stat that he had control over) was excellent--hovering at or near 1000.


The reason that the season ticket holders get e-mails like this is because despite many of you having graduated from the university (presumably) or a university, you lack the interest to look this information up yourselves and you just accept out of hand whatever the football coach or athletic director tells you about our academic results.

First off, the APR wasn't excellent Tedford's first couple of years. They didn't start tracking the APR until the 2004 season, which was his third year.

Secondly, the APR has never at any point hovered near 1000.

Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2004 - 2005 945
Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2005 - 2006 965
Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2006 - 2007 967
Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2007 - 2008 970
Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2008 - 2009 969
Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2009 - 2010 949
Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2010 - 2011 936
Football University of California, Berkeley CA 2011 - 2012 935

All of this information on football or any other school sport is publicly available for anybody to look up.

https://web1.ncaa.org/maps/tiwitytilamvmaprRelease.jsp

Thirdly, for those who say "Why do we care about graduation rates from 2003-06" when they say nothing about what's happening now? Well, the current APR results from the last three seasons show that the grad rates aren't going to be good those years either and based on what we've heard about the 2012 season, the APR probably won't be good that year either. 2013 is as yet unknown, but given how the athletic department has consistently fed us inaccurate information about the football team's academics, I'd wait to see some improvement in our APR figures before assuming that things are getting better this year.

For what it's worth, if we were consistently producing the figures from 2005-2008, I would consider that pretty good. Cal is a difficult school and I don't think we can ever realistically approach 1.000 in a sport like football. But we definitely need to be doing better. Not because of the negative effect that the APR has on available scholarships if it stays low but because these kids are here making money for the school so that other kids in less profitable sports can get athletic scholarships and have the Cal experience. We owe it to the players in the football and basketball programs to make sure that they have the very best academic support that they can in order to make sure that they make the most of the opportunity they have been given. Many of the kids that play those sports are starting from a deficit when they get to Cal. They may have come from poor academic high schools or poor familial economic situations and require extra support in order to succeed at Cal. In my opinion, we owe them that support to make sure that if they didn't get the education they deserved at the lower levels that they can make the most of their time here. I don't want to be a university that is like Stanford and only accepts people with higher GPA's and SAT's and then pushes them through the system because it makes them look good. I am proud that I come from a school that gave a scholarship to a kid like Russell White, assessed his learning disability, and gave him an opportunity to earn a degree that he never would have earned otherwise had he not possessed his rare talent for football. I feel the same way about guys like Leon Powe and Jorge Gutierrez. It enriches our university when guys like that take advantage of their educational opportunities. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that Leon Powe probably never graduated from Cal because while he was here, he took advantage of his educational opportunity. When his basketball career ends, I expect he'll probably come back and finish that degree.

I have no doubt that many of the universities that have better APR's are just gaming the system and pushing kids through so that their APR is good enough to keep the programs running. But there are also a lot of universities who aren't gaming the system and doing a better job than we are. We need to raise our game.
Oski87
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Holmoe had poor graduation rates. Braun had poor graduation rates. Kapp had poor graduation rates. Cal football grad rates are about the historical average.

The attention is now there in the media, so people are wondering why. I can tell you why. It is because Cal is hard, and the players who come in are not used to competing against the top 1% academically. There is no coddling of athletes at Cal. There are some cush classes - but not enough to make a major and get through. It is just a grind in berkeley, and for those who are average students, it is very difficult to get through.

Noe, that may be the same everywhere else, but I really do not think so. Most of the top schools have excellent grad rates - even with marginal students. Having a 100% grad rate in football, like at ND? Really? No one ever came in who was a poor student, or just an average student who got laze eventually? That just defies logic. I mean, no one ever has had a medical or emotional breakdown, or just decided they could bnot give a crap anymore? It's like a banana republic election - 100% of the voters voted for me. The numbers elsewhere are suspect.
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