Well, duh. Interesting article nonetheless.:baby: CNN analysis: Some college athletes play like adults, read like 5th-graders.
Seems to me colleges should spin off their major athletic programs to a non-academic subsidiary business (with profits going to the college). Athletes could have the option of either pursuing a degree or pursuing a high school diploma; with cost paid for by the subsidiary.
I can tell you that the issue is not just a large school issue. Here are the initial eligibility requirements from the NAIA: NAIA Eligibility Center | PlayNAIA | playnaia.org So if you went to a poor inner city high school and maintained a 2.0, you probably were in the top 50% of your class. You're admitted with eligibility. On the flip side, some of the best students in my classes are student athletes... Shawn
I wish I could say that. My community college doesn't have nearly as many sports as my high school did, but when I taught high school, there was a noticeable difference between sports. Football, Basketball and Track were the lower performers, whereas Field Hockey, Cross Country and Soccer were higher performers. -Matt
Last year I taught an introductory business writing course at a well-known Div I school. (Very well-known in football). In that particular class I had two student athletes (football players), and each had a "tutor" assigned to them. The "tutor" :wink: was responsible for note taking and served as liaison between student athlete and teacher. Since I was a lonely adjunct teaching the class I never gave much thought about it. The tutors were also responsible in "guiding" the student athletes with school work.
It's possible to combine college athletics with strong academics. Dartmouth, for example, is a small Ivy League school that is famous for emphasizing undergraduate education, and they also strongly encourage athletic participation: The numbers are even higher at some Division III schools. At Williams, which is the top-rated liberal arts college by US News: Schools like this believe in the cliche that "sports build character". However, their first priority is academic talent -- they maintain high admissions standards even for athletes, they don't grant athletic scholarships, and they don't assign special "tutors" to athletes. Of course, this also means that they don't get the top athletes. You won't see Dartmouth football games or Williams basketball games on TV. But maybe college athletics can serve other purposes besides televised entertainment.
I see it in the making, from the sidelines. If your kid plays sports, you already know how this happens. They start the "either or" mentality in about 1st grade.
What makes me chuckle about that, is my husband had a student last year with a pretty severe processing issue. It interefered with the student's ability to perform well-enough to pass his lab, though it wasn't exactly that the student couldn't do the work, but had a diagnosed/documented problem that wasn't going away-ever. That said, my husband went to the learning specialist with an idea of assigning a personal tutor to help with some of the details that would otherwise cause this student to fail. (note taking during a power point, locating information in a textbook during lab, etc.) Even the learning specialist said there was absolutely no way they would allow such a significant accommodation.
Student Athletes In defense of athletes, when I was involved in hiring, athletes were always some of the stronger hires. If just out of school, they had accomplished something in addition to graduating, they were team players, they were used to prioritizing demands for their time, and they were used to getting yelled at by the boss and/or the public. I was in a job where a physical presence was a positive and that had physical fitness requirements when being hired and when on the job, and this was also a plus.
It's not just athletes. Over half of our incoming students struggle with 5th-8th grade level math and reading. Developmental reading and math are by far our largest classes with the most students. A majority of our new students must take these classes and half of them fail these classes the first time. It's astonishing and scary. How did they graduate high school? How did they pass their proficiency tests to graduate? Something is terribly wrong with high schools. Either there is rampant student cheating or massive administrative fraud. My college has a very high percentage (~70%) of minority students. I'm wondering if that has something to do with it. I'm very new to the education industry, but I just can't believe this is normal for colleges.
