March Graduation Madness

[theo_sugator]

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer had a segment on Friday about graduation rates for basketball student-athletes at the 65 schools participating in this year's NCAA tourney.  One of the guests was Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida.  He was the lead author of a new 

Comments

Variables?

[plunge25]

Does the study only count graduation rates of those students who don't leave the NCAA for the NBA, though? Can't these basketball players go pro after only one year in the NCAA? Does the NBA have some liability in this (assuming they create the rules about age limits, etc.)? I'm genuinley asking because while it's depressing one the one hand, on the other I can see making (at least) several hundred thousand dollars a year as an incentive to leave college - making that much money right out of college in a joby-job is unlikely, and three years is a lot of time for recruiters to lose interest in you. Female basketball players have far less incentive to leave college to go pro because the WNBA doesn't pay all that much more than your average college-degree entry-level job does. I'm just wondering if the study addressed this or not, because I'm way too lazy to go read the whole thing myself.

Re: Variables?

[theo_sugator]

My dear lazy friend,

The WNBA's lack of financial incentives was directly addressed by the NewsHour segment as part of the reason for female graduation rates being higher than male graduation rates for basketball student-athletes.

The formula used to calculate the graduation rates for student athletes has recently been adjusted so that students who leave colleges early to go to professional sports won't negatively impact their graduation rates as long as the students are in good academic standing when they leave. This move was strongly endorsed by Dr. Lapchick and his Institute.

Lastly, is "lazy" really the correct word to describe your unwillingness to spend more of your time puttering about on the Internet? I would think that if you were truly lazy, you'd have plenty of time to follow all sorts of links I could provide.

Re: Variables?

[plunge25]

Well, yeah, lazy because I continued to putter around on the internet. I just didn't want to read anything remotely academic. :) Although that study does sound kind of interesting. Perhaps I'll get around to it.