Rutgers prof in hot water over racist statements

Amraeder asks a good question. And Pastor provides a real-world answer. Very few of the athletic programs outside the big football combines are completely sealed off from the economics of the greater university.

Here's another thought, and one I assume has the professor's dander up: At what point does the school begin bending over backwards in ways illicit and legitimate to accommodate the semi-literate "student-athlete"? At what point does the institution start cheating itself to keep a kid eligible? At what point does the toll on academic credibility become so great that no amount of money can compensate for it?

I've taught at a couple of places - including one big football school - and the subcontracting of homework and the writing of papers to other students and "tutors" to keep athletes academically eligible was an open secret, and a source of absolute shame for a lot of department heads.

 

I wonder about the news peg in all of this. Rutgers did not get better because they gave up on smart athletes and got some fast idiots. They were always recruiting average-to-poor students, like their peers. Now, they just recruit average-to-poor students who run faster and can lift more weight, and they do it more efficiently. I can guarantee you there's little variance in the Rutgers team GPA in 2007 as opposed to a decade ago when it went 0-11 or 2-9 every year.

 

Per the NYT story, looks like the original peg was the professor's book, which is really an indictment of a national problem, not just the new success at Rutgers. The condemnations from his own administration followed the next day. The original story also mentions a small recent downturn in the Rutgers athlete graduation rate.

 

Even if Rutgers isn't there now (anyone know if they are), isn't the goal of this whole exercise to get them to that point?
So, what's the big deal, I guess (as long as there's no blatant cheating like jgmacg suggested).
The trade off of admitting a few less-than-stellar students in order to get your entire athletic budget supported by football is a good thing. In fact, it helps the other students because all of their tuition/fees now go away from the athletic department.

And BBAM you are right, these semi-literate kids will take up a seat in a class but the number of semi-literate kids who take up seats is probably no greater than the number of kids on full academic schoolies who blow off class. Any kid who wanted that seat can take it next semester, there's always plenty of classes to take. Again, the whole drop in a bucket.

 

Why should there not be a degree of elitism in higher education, the same way it exists in athletics?

Do people have no problem when sports coaches make evaluations based almost purely on talent and potential, but blanch at the idea of the academic side of the school making the same types of selections appropriate to it?

A high school athlete who can't cut it in the elite FBS conferences is relegated to mid-major, I-AA, II or III or even NAIA status. Why not the acceptance for the same sort of stratification for academics? One can even make the argument that the tools used to evaluate academic performance (GPA, test scores, etc.) are more precise and accurate than those in sports (40-time, bench press, game film) in predicting future success.

 

So you could say a kid has a Division I mind but Division III study habits?

 

Sort of like eliminating QBs based on being 5-10 ...

I'm not committed either way, I just think it's question worth asking.

 

I certainly understand the professor's point philosophically, but what percentage of kids are we talking about here? A football team has 85 scholarships. Let's say that, at most, the university says they'll give the school 30 exceptions. (And that's a huge, huge number. At an ACC school like Virginia or Maryland, it's probably much lower.) Those 30 kids who play football could not otherwise get into Rutgers, and are, at least on the surface, probably the kind of kids he's so callously dismissing. Can't read a cereal box, aren't there for any real scholastic opportunity, will likely never graduate, will need considerable help to stay eligible, and are hoping to use the exposure to punch a ticket to the NFL. In addition, we'll say the Rutgers admissions department gives the athletic department a little help with another 30 kids. They're good enough, at least with transcripts and test scores, to get into Rutgers, but get definite preference because of football. They don't have to sweat out admissions day.

Rutgers enrollment last year was 37,000 undergraduates (and 13,000 graduate students). So if we say it's 60 kids who might not make the cut, that's .0016 percent of the undergrads. Let's say they're all non-New Jersey residents, because I believe that's how they calculate the value of athletic scholarships. A full-ride at Rutgers (tuition, fees, room and board) costs $30,000 a semester for the 2007-08 academic year. We're talking about $7.2 million or so for those 60 kids, half of which aren't illiterate, but for the purpose of our discussion, we're grouping them in with the so-called fools.

Is the university compromising itself by spending $7.2 million on .0016 percent of its undergraduates? Even if the athletic department isn't self-contained (and I disagree somewhat that that happens at only the major football factories; I know from covering an ACC school earlier in my career that it's more than you think). The school's endowment is probably close to $500 million, I would bet. Is the football team successful enough to get people to give $7 million to the school they otherwise wouldn't? I bet it is.

Philosophically, yes, the school is compromising its mission. But it's also (around) .0016 percent of the students. How many kids get admitted to Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale on legacy admissions? I promise you it's more than .0016 percent. Didn't they win the genetic lottery in the same way a great athlete does?

I think there are serious, serious problems with the entire fraud that is "amateur" athletics in this country, but I also think that it's B.S. to imply that all those illiterate football players admitted into universities simply because of their athletic prowess are glory-seeking, NFL-bound thugs. I've written a fair amount about inner city kids, some of them from neighborhoods most of you would consider hell on earth. And as much as some of them do desperately dream of playing in the NFL, an equal number dream of simply getting a chance at college. They're not stupid kids. They come from awful schools with no resources and plenty of violence. Many of them have "parents" only in the loosest possible sense. Football is their only realistic shot at something better. Some of those kids absolutely do fuck around and barely stay eligible when they get to college and don't graduate. But some embrace it like its their one chance to escape a constant cycle of poverty.

I wrote about a kid several years ago who came from one of the worst schools in my area. Drugs, murder, poverty, bad teachers, you name it. Because of football, he went to Virginia Tech and graduated with a double major in three and half years. All-ACC academic squad three years. After graduation, and after he got cut from an NFL practice squad, he decided go back to the inner city to teach, be a counselor and a coach.

And maybe Dowling's research shows that not enough kids like him actually take advantage of that kind of opportunity. But you know what? For me, it's worth investing the money simply for the ones who do. And though ideally it would be great to find the kid studying in the library and give him or her a full-ride scholarship, a lot of the places where these kids come from don't even have libraries. There is no statistic that can explain the benefit of college educated, strong male role models in an inner city community. But I've seen it with my own eyes, and it's as real as it is priceless.

jgmacg, you asked a great question: At what point does the toll on academic credibility become so great that no amount of money can compensate for it?

Here is what I would ask to help expand the debate: At what point do those who abuse the system and abuse the opportunity given to them outweigh those who see it as the greatest opportunity they've ever been given?

What if, for every two athletes who cheat, need considerable help from tutors, and make no attempt to learn, there is one that does the opposite? Or what if the ratio is 3 to 1? Or 5 to 1?

Is the system, though obviously flawed, worth tearing apart or abandoning? I don't know. Maybe.

But if so, I don't much want to break the news to the kid who is doing all he can with the opportunity.

 

Great post, DD.

Not having read the professor's book, I'm reluctant to try to parse his arguments.

And your practical math on behalf of the kids who do benefit is first class.

I think maybe the general worry in the academic world - in addition to the simple and predictable resentment - is that even though the big-money D1 athletic programs are compartmentalized, and do generate a trickle-down benefit, and do represent only a tiny percentage of the student body, that eventually the entire school deforms itself around those programs. Whether as a matter of reputation, or the applied economics of which department gets what, there's a risk to every marquee sports school in trying to balance big-ticket sports with big-ticket academics.

There's an awful lot here to talk about, but throw this into the mix as well: if your big-football school is financially compartmentalized, and generates $40 million a year in revenue, after expenses are paid, should that revenue be plowed back into athletics only? Or do you distribute it across the breadth of the university? If the poets were getting new chapbooks and the chemists new test tubes the year you went to the Sugar Bowl, I think a lot of cardigan-clad academics would be happier with the split.

 

Well done, DD. Your story about the Virginia Tech thing was exactly what I was going to point out. This professor is assuming that all of these borderline students who get into Rutgers on athletic scholarships will fail to take advantage of the opportunities presented to them. That just isn't true.

Yes, some of these guys just want to play and couldn't care less about class. Others will blossom once they are in a college environment. Maybe not a large number of them, but enough to make it worthwhile. Some of these young people don't see academics as a way to a scholarship. They see it in football or basketball. I think the professor is painting college athletes with too broad of a brush. I know others here disagree with me.

And this professor doesn't think football and basketball contribute enough to the university once publicity and financial gains are considered. He is entitled to that opinion. But the people in charge of his school, as well as every other college that offers athletic scholarships in this country, disagree with him. That's a lot of people. Boy, he must like himself a lot to think they are all idiots.

 

I read that the football team's GPA is 2.7, on par with the rest of the student body at Rutgers.

 

Seriously, DD you eloquently said what I couldn't manage to, good work.