Upon Further Review: Lowering standards a bad idea
I want to follow up on last week’s column concerning athletes who don’t graduate from college.
It’s already bad enough we have coaches recruiting players and not seeing they succeed academically. On the average, 42 percent of college athletes don’t graduate. Among African-American players, 65 percent never get their degree. Most kids have a hard time just trying to meet the minimum required ACT score of 17 to be eligible for college.
But for some of those athletes, achieving the NCAA green light could soon get a little easier. The NCAA plans this year to consider significantly reducing, or even eliminating, the minimum SAT or ACT score required for freshman eligibility.
Currently, the NCAA determines eligibility by using a sliding scale that weighs grade-point average against a standardized test score, with 820 on the SAT, or its ACT equivalent, as the rock bottom.
This is all being considered in order to keep players from skipping college ball altogether. Some athletes are encouraged by the success of players like Kevin Garnett, who seven years ago became the first player in two decades to go straight to the NBA out of high school. But will this lowering of eligibility scores graduate more athletes?
I don’t think so; it is just a way colleges can put better players on the floor to produce a wining program.
College sports like football and basketball bring in tons of money to the universities and the NCAA. So if they lower the score to enter college, they can bring in more athletes to help make the sports programs more money.
The true educators of the college community are very upset about lowering of scores.
“The NCAA regulations are already a joke and a fraud,” William Dowling, a Rutgers English professor and a member of the national faculty organization recently said. “To have an 820 SAT is the rough equivalent of a wide receiver having a 40-yard dash time of 7.5 seconds.”
Last year the average SAT score of college students nationally was 1,200. The 200-point gap between that figure and the NCAA minimum means athletes who barely qualify have already had a tough time competing with their peers in high school.
Lowering the test scores will have a big effect on schools which are known for high academic standards. Schools like Vanderbilt, which has a hard time competing in the SEC already, are going to suffer the most. If these schools don’t lower their entrance scores they will fall even further behind and lose more top athletes to universities with lower standards.
It seems the NCAA has enough problems year after year with its athletes. Do they need to risk more embarrassment and criticism?
Once again we are willing to give up our morals and pride to make more money.
If the NCAA is going to pass this new academic standard, it will go into effect in 2003. This is not going to help the graduation rate of athletes, in fact the percent of players who don’t graduate will rise.
When universities were first built, they were places of higher learning. Everything was built around academics. Now it seems academics are built around sports and a college is judged by the success of its athletic programs.
Let’s not sacrifice a kid’s education over a few dollars. If they are going to be in college lets make sure they learn and get a degree while they can.
If the athlete is good enough he is going to skip college anyway, so why lower your standards?