The "A" Curve: University High School and the NCAA

Do you remember those days in high school when you wished that you didn't have to deal with the whole school scene? When you wished that you didn't have to get up early every morning so that you wouldn't be late for homeroom? When you wished that you didn't have to deal with nightly homework, quizzes, midterms, exams, lab projects, teachers, class participation, other students . . . everything?

For most of us, those dreams were never realized. After-all, we wanted to go to college, so we knew that we had to work hard, at least most of the time.

But as the New York Times reports, such a place exists where all of those dreams come true, every day of the year, for every student, and you can still even go to college. It may sound like the Field of Dreams, but it is actually University High School. And instead of being in Iowa, it is in Miami. And instead of being in a cornfield (or even a stand-alone building), University High School consists of two small rooms on the third floor of an office building, with three desks, and three employees.

Life seems pretty good at University High School, as no classes are held and exams are open-book and untimed. Students also receive packets of assignments that contain the answers in the back. Not surprisingly, students tend to do very well at University High School. Even better, high school diplomas can be earned in just four to six weeks, provided you can shell out $399 (and that's a flat rate for the diploma -- no matter how many courses you take).

Granted, University High School isn't accredited. And granted, its founder served 10 months in federal prison for mail fraud in connection with a mail-order college diploma scheme. And granted, its current owner is wanted on a bench warrant. But setting aside such minutiae for a moment, consider why many college football fans should be very grateful for University High: it has proven to be a refuge for premiere high school football players who cannot otherwise do well academically. And what do you know, NCAA rules treat academics at schools like University High as equivalent to those at schools like Phillips Andover, St. John's Prep, or St. Andrew's, and thus colleges can provide athletic scholarships based on the GPAs earned at University High.

This works well for those premiere athletes: they take each course that they had failed at other high school schools, and then--remarkably--they tend to do much better at University High in those same topics. For instance, Lorenzo Ferguson, a second-year defensive back at Auburn, left one high school in Miami for University High, and after one month had somehow raised his GPA from 2.0 (at his old school) to 2.6 (including his old and new schools -- he must have racked up some As!). Ferguson isn't alone. The New York Times identifies 14 recent graduates of University High who signed with 11 Division I football programs, including Auburn, Florida, Florida State, South Florida, Tennessee and Temple.

As you can read in the excellent piece by Pete Thamel and Duff Wilson, a number of University High alumns are now complaining that they are unable to do well in college, since they didn't learn too much in high school, thus implying that perhaps the NCAA should reconsider its policies. The NCAA claims to have taken the matter under advisement.

"If you build it, he will come." I think we can safely report: he has come, he has passed, and he is now making a lot of money for some college athletic program somewhere.

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