A school plays a large part in the retention of student athletes. Most athletes in the major sports (basketball and football) are pawns of profit for athletic departments. Schools should either recruit athletes who are already excelent students or help them to become so.

cardtopper Wrote:A school plays a large part in the retention of student athletes. Most athletes in the major sports (basketball and football) are pawns of profit for athletic departments. Schools should either recruit athletes who are already excelent students or help them to become so.

Thats what Greg Schiano strives for with our football players in terms of their academics. His thing is you are a student first and foremost. And it shows as we have an incredibly high graduation rate, the #3 in the country. We also seem to have our fair share of academic standouts amongst our student athletes here.

For my first post, I will provide my two cents regarding academics, athletics, and retention rates. I agree with L-yes that measuring acceptance figures and retention rates are not great ways to evaluate a university. The UC article that started this thread seems to enjoy pointing out WVU as a school that accepts everyone. However as a former resident of West Virginia and a WVU graduate, I would like clarify a few things. First, as the only major land-grant institution in the state of West Virginia, one of the university's missions is to educate the young residents of the state. As such, at least when I attended in the early 80's, if you maintained a 2.0 grade average in high school, scored around a 19 or 20 on the ACT and your family paid taxes in the state of West Virginia, you would be admitted to WVU. Now I agree that those standards are low, but again, the mission is to provide an affordable college education for the residents of WV, not to become the next Harvard. Looking at the retention rate, only 55 to 60% of the students accepted graduate in 5 years. I have not conducted the research to determine why this rate is so low, however my opinion is that many of the lower performing kids cannot make it academically and drop out. So in effect, WVU is getting penalized twice for giving marginal students an opportunity to acquire a college degree and I believe that is unfair. BTW, the student-athlete retention/graduation rate is the same as the student body.

Now, since I live in North Carolina adn my wife is an UNC graduate, let's look at Chapel Hill. No question that UNC is a factastic school and year in and year out is rated as one of the top 20 to 30 public or private universities in the country. In fact, ask any UNC graduate - they will be happy to tell you how superior they are (OK, my only joke - but it is really a very good school). Because they are such a good school, it is extremely difficult to get accepted. There are high school students here that have 4.0 gpa's and get rejected. With that being said, does everyone believe that the great basketball players that attend UNC have the same admission scores? Of course not! Now they are probably higher standards than many schools, but I would believe that they are not even close to the admission scores for the general student population.

The point of my rambling is that until we compare apples to apples, the whole academic/athletic comparison is not a valid comparison. Is it better to have a student/athlete acceptance rate similar to the general student population (like WVU) or skewed like UNC-Chapel Hill? It may not make a difference - I just don't think it is fair to compare university acceptance standards and athletic performance when the two really are not tied to each other.

Kit-Cat Wrote:Of the 16 Big East institutions (as of July 1, that is), UC posts the lowest average SAT score (920) among middle-percentile freshmen. Its ACT numbers, however, are higher than West Virginia's.

Cincinnati's 49 percent graduation rate, equal to South Florida's, exceeds only West Virginia's and Louisville's.

Next to West Virginia, which accepts everybody, UC is the least selective Big East member, admitting 88 percent of its applicants.

UC and Louisville show a 74 percent freshman retention rate, ahead of only West Virginia and slightly in arrears of Seton Hall and South Florida.

The latter category, inseparable from the graduation rate, is one over which the UC hierarchy is profoundly concerned. Hence the crackdown on admissions.

"We have a graduation rate that we generally believe needs to be improved," said university spokesman Greg Hand. "That graduation rate is partially the effect of the preparedness of the students who apply.

"It's not the goal (of the new standards) to turn people away."

:laugh:

Wow, that post pretty much oozes arrogance and elitism. You do realize, don't you, that the actual purpose for a public urban university is to provide an education for the people who provide the taxes that support it, don't you? The goal of ANY college or university should never be to turn people away. Acting like you're somehow better than the unwashed masses who dream of getting a college education doesn't make you better than them. In fact, many people would think that it makes you worse.

USFFan

Ironically, good football teams improve academics indirectly. When a team excels on the gridiron, the number of applications increases dramatically. Since, the colleges can only take so many, the average SAT score improves.

According to the NCAA, these are the only schools (and the sports in question) that fell below the APR penalty line. None are BEast.

Teams Moving Below the Penalty Line After Edits
May 12, 2005
Sorted by sport

Institution Sport APR Before Edits Final APR
LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY MBA 900 846
PURDUE UNIVERSITY MBA 898 888
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA MBB 905 870
NORFOLK STATE UNIVERSITY MBB 879 870
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH MBB 921 857
UC IRVINE MBB 871 871
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON MBB 871 871
LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY MCC 895 827
MISSISSIPPI STATE UNIVERSITY MFB 906 904
UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, KNOXVILLE MFB 920 902
LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY MGO 878 848
LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY MTI 911 816
MURRAY STATE UNIVERSITY MTI 1,000 735
LOUISIANA TECH UNIVERSITY MTO 911 816
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES WBB 899 867
AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY WCC 875 813
AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY WTI 891 875
AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY WTO 891 867

Academic rankings are not the end-all; they are a guideline for entering freshmen.

Obviously, if MIT has a minimum SAT score of 1300, and another university has a minimum of 725, the higher cut-off point university will have more students who graduate.

What I look at is proper accreditation by the proper regional collegiate organization. If a school is accredited, it is doing an acceptable job.

Athletics and entrance requirements/progress are an entirely different animal. In most schools (I would contend), many athletes in major sports are far removed from the general student population in terms of academic achievement and expectations. Michigan, an excellent school, was exposed several years ago for having a tailor-made weak curriculum for athletes. Ohio State, another good school, had a running back a few years ago who had a fight with the head coach because he wanted to take pre-med classes.

We have to take any rankings (academically) with a grain of salt when discussing athletics. Actually, I'm much more concerned with the criminality/morality of some of the athletes than their overall academics.

The NCAA and the colleges themselves are obviously unconcerned with whether or not an athlete fits academically. Have you ever heard the suggestion that the athletic team on the whole should have the same average SAT score as the rest of the student body? I don't think you'll see that legislation soon!

If a college has proper accreditation, they're okay with me.

<a href='http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf04330/pdf/tabb35.pdf' target='_blank'>R&D expenditure at universities and colleges – 2002</a>

Top-10 national ranking
1) Johns Hopkins - $1,140,235,000
2) U. Ca Los Angeles - $787,598,000
3) Michigan - $673,724,000
4) Wisconsin - $662,101,000
5) Washington - $627,273,000
6) U. Ca San Francisco - $596,965,000
7) U. Ca San Diego - $585,008,000
8) Stanford - $538,474,000
9) U. PA - $522,269,000
10) Cornell - $496,123,000

Big East
24) Pittsburgh - $400,200,000
48) Rutgers - $258,829,000
57) Cincinnati - $217,739,000
62) South Florida - $197,894,000
74) Connecticut - $172,003,000
119) West Virginia - $84,985,000
122) Louisville - $80,974,000
151) Syracuse - $45,870,000

others of interest
12) Penn State - $492,739,000
50) Buffalo - $239,735,000

87) Clemson - $134,840,000
88) Florida State - $134,351,000
101) Wake Forest - $111,634,000

104) UMass - $109,332,000
140) Notre Dame - $52,371,000
176) Boston College - $31,754,000 (It’s all about academic)
:laugh: