Has anyone else read the article by CNN on the academic deficiencies of big time college athletics? Not surprising to me. I would just like to comment that before we start criticizing our athletic programs for not recruiting or getting so and so we need to take a serious look at whether or not they are University of California, Berkeley material. I am not saying elite. I am only asking for average. The inability of athletes to obtain more than 400 or 500 on each of the SAT tests or be able to read at better than a 4th or 5th grade level is inexcuseable in our higher education institutions. Athletes should never be exempt from being able to perform in the classroom.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

...but I was lifting while it was on and there was no audio. If anyone knows of a streaming resource for this, I would like to see the report. I will mention that when I glanced at the college/university logos that were flashed briefly I did not notice Cal among them. Should be an interesting report.

I would be interested in knowing the SAT scores of incoming football and basketball players at similar prestige universities, such as: the Furd, UCLA, Mich., Virginia, Northwestern. The media is convinced that anyone who plays for Stanfurd has got to be super-intelligent when we know that isn't the case. The scores of their freshman-athletes cannot be too disparate from our own. Is there anyway to find this out? I realize private universities don't have to reveal this info, but if we're going to be disparaged we ought to know what others have done.

We are not disparaged in the report. The issue is not APR and GSR, but that many schools, not Cal, cheat to keep players eligible and graduate them. They admit players with 4th grade reading level and then somehow graduate them at schools like UNC, which are good academic schools and have very high GSR.

We don't cheat, which creates a different problem, namely a lower APR and GSR. The reports goes to show that the APR and GSR stats are bull.

There should be a minor league for players who want to go pro but don't want to go to college. Pay these minor leaguers also.

Hmm - would that really be in the kid's best interest? A bigger question is how are kid's getting all the way through high school without learning to read at a 9th grade level?

Quote:

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In December, the Drake Group, which pushes for academic integrity in collegiate sports, organized a lobbying trip to Washington to push for an amendment to the College Education Act of 1965. Director Allen Sack said he wants to see a College Athlete Protection Act -- legislation that would keep athletes on the bench as freshmen if they are academically more than one standard deviation lower than the average student admitted to the university.

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Well that would completely screw over schools with better educated student bodies like Cal, Michigan, Virginia, etc. Terrible idea.

Troubling report. I don't see anyway until you deal with the cost side of the equation (I continually come back to SCT's view that capping AD and Coaching salaries is the right way).

From a University President perspective there are really 2 problems going on. First, they have a monster that just needs to be fed. Our stadium financing problems are an example but these pressures exist all over the country. With the need for revenue to feed the beast comes pressure to win and that leads to corruption. The ALTERNATIVE to not feeding the beast is really really bad. You have to cut academic programs and there is NOTHING more fearful on a university campus than a faculty that gets told it has to teach more or take out the trash or is shorted TA's. These are articulate people with lots of time on their hands. Most (all?) don't like sports because they were always picked last on the kick ball team. They can make an administrators life "hell". And so most programs DESPERATELY want to keep close to being in the black.

Now Boosters can be a second problem. Pressure put on the President to "win". But a lot of that is stereotypes from the movies. Most governance systems provide a decent amount of autonomy from those sort of pressures. They can bitch at the President but really it is hard to defend "Yes, you have good students and an improving faculty but I want a Conference championship!!!" Most donors at MOST schools don't care about Ws and Ls. Even at a place like USC, Former President Steve Sample was able to shift the power at the board of trustees by doing What campus presidents are hired to do - go raise Big bucks from donors interested in putting their name on a building or creating a new school.

By capping salaries (and the easiest way would be through the Federal Education Act - prohibiting DOE funds and student loans to institutions paying any staff member more than $1 million) one could immediately start to get the beast under control.

We could simply make all freshman RS, and no traveling - that is what they did in the old days.