Sports Law Blog reader Jason Chung--who, as you may remember, wrote an excellent article on racial discrimination and African-American Quarterbacks in the NFL--passes along a recent story on how few schools will lose scholarships for poor scholastic performance by their student-athletes. ("Few Big Names to Lose Scholarships based on APR," ESPN.com, 3/1/2006). Specifically, 99 Division I sports teams at 65 colleges and universities--or less than 2 percent of 6,112 Division I sports teams nationwide--will lose scholarships. Of those 99 teams, 90 are men's teams and 9 are women's teams, and the majority are in three sports: football (23), baseball (21), and men's basketball (17). Several Division I-A football teams lost quite a few scholarships (Temple lost 9; New Mexico lost 6), and several Division I-A basketball teams also suffered (e.g. Cal-Poly and East Carolina lost 2). But overall, few big names schools lost scholarships.
The NCAA's measuring stick for academic performance--the Academic Progress Rate or "APR"--is calculated by measuring the academic eligibility and retention of student-athletes by team each term. According to the ESPN article, an APR of 925 calculates to an approximate Graduation Success Rate of 60 percent. For a team to lose a scholarship, a student-athlete must have failed academically and left the institution; and the team's APR must be below 925 (out of 1000). Teams that fall below the NCAA's cutoff line would not be able to replace those scholarships when academically ineligible athletes leave school. The NCAA has limited penalties to a maximum of 10 percent of the scholarships.
Jason wonders whether the APR system leads to unintended and undesirable outcomes:
I have some issues with the APR – chiefly, the fact that scholarships are being denied to underprivileged youths that engage in athletics. I understand the desire for the NCAA to ensure the sanctity of education (namely, that student-athletes live up to the first part of their job descriptions) but could this not be better achieved through alternative methods (such as denying access to Bowl games)? Taking away scholarships from the great number of underprivileged youths that need such a scholarship to attend college in the first place seems counterintuitive to me.Jason raises some very good points. I especially like his point that when the NCAA takes away a scholarship due to the failure of an existing student, the real victim is the future student who would otherwise have had that scholarship. And that is especially unfortunate when that future student comes from an underprivileged background.
Also, schools are being penalized for the lackadaisical scholastic attitudes of their student-athletes. Is this really fair? While I understand that many schools are rather non-involved in the academic lives of their student-athletes, is this necessarily a bad thing? After all, at what point does the student have to take ownership of his own decisions? If the student-athlete fritters away his own chance to get a (mostly) free education, why should the school face possible scholarship sanctions down the road for certain students’ immaturity?
To summarize, I understand the sentiment in trying to raise graduation rates but I am puzzled by the methodology. I believe that denying scholarships as a penalty ultimately harms prospective student-athletes more than schools.
But in defense of the existing players who fail, I question how much of it is really personal responsibility and personal choice. The average Division I football and basketball player spends between 40 and 50 hours per week on team related activities (playing games, traveling, attending team meetings, working out, practicing), which obviously makes it rather difficult for them to do well, especially when their school may limit the work hours of other students to 10 or 20 hours per week. I saw this first-hand while I was a student at Georgetown University from 1994 to 1998, and when I had the opportunity to do collaborative academic work with former Hoyas Jahidi White and Jerry Nichols--their entire lives revolved around the team, and yet they were expected to take a full load of classes. How can they realistically compete, particularly when the other students in their classes couldn't work more than 10-20 hours per week? To their credit, they were able to do relatively well. And you can aruge that since most student-athletes seem to be able to pass the APR, then it is an obtainable goal (although graduation rates for student-athletes at many top schools is abysmal).
But I do wonder about flunking out or otherwise stigmatizing students who are on campus solely to make the school a lot of money through their athletic prowess, and who do not have the time or academic background to succeed in class. It seems to send the wrong message.
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