Entries Tagged 'athletic scholarships' ↓

Last time we talked a bit about the dilemmas of the student athlete. Well, I heard from a varsity basketball player on the west coast who told me to check out a International Herald Tribune story about Stephanie Campbell, a Villanova field hockey.

Bill Pennington’s story makes all the issues come alive:

“As a high school senior, she had been thrilled to receive a $19,000 athletic scholarship to play field hockey at Villanova, a select, private institution near Philadelphia. But she had not counted on the 7 a.m. start of every class day, something required so she could be in the locker room by noon to prepare for a four-hour shift of afternoon practices and weight-lifting sessions. Travel to games forced her to miss exams and classes. There were also mandatory team meetings, study halls and weekend practices.

She was overwhelmed.”

What Stephanie Campbell – and so many other student athletes – discovered was that something had to give. In her case, it was about recognizing the business end of school sports. Stephanie’s mom, Kathleen, helped her daughter figure it out:

“So Kathleen Campbell sat her daughter down, waited for a break in the sobs and said: “Villanova costs more than $40,000 a year to attend. They’re paying you $19,000 to play field hockey. At your age, there is no one out there anywhere who is going to pay you that kind of money to do anything. And that’s how you have to look at this: It’s a job, but it’s a great job.”

Campbell, 22, kept at it all four years, serving as a team captain last fall while majoring in marketing. She is expected to graduate this spring.

“I’m missing the sport terribly already,” she said last month. “But it was a ton of work. Receiving an athletic scholarship is a wonderful thing, but most of us only know what we’re getting, not what we’re getting into.”

Campbell made it work but a lot of student athletes don’t. You can get a sense of the problem by looking at the data the NCAA assembles on the Academic Progress Rate (APR), and the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) at colleges and universities across the country.

According to the NCAA :

“The APR provides a real-time “snapshot” of a team’s academic success each semester by looking at current academic progress of every student-athlete.
The APR includes eligibility, retention, and graduation as factors in the rate calculation and provides a much clearer picture of the current academic culture in each sport.
The GSR looks back at historical academic success by measuring graduation of all student-athletes, including transfer students and students who leave campus in good academic standing.

Each Division I sports team receives an APR score. An APR of 925 (out of 1,000) equals roughly a 60 percent Graduation Success Rate.”

Remember only about 60% of student athletes graduate within 6 years.

The importance of student athletes receiving a good education – and the issue of graduation rates – becomes especially clear when you examine how many or few student athletes make the transition to professional sports. Of course, playing professional sports is a dream of so many student athletes – but how often does the dream come true?

Here are some sports and the statistics:
Men’s Basketball - 1.2%
Women’s Basketball - 1.0%
Football - 1.8%
Baseball - 9.4%
Men’s Ice Hockey - 3.7%
Men’s Soccer - 1.7%

Here’s a look at the 1997- 2000 NCAA graduation success rates (and federal statistics) at two representative schools:

You can data for all schools on the NCAA website.

One last note: college is a challenge for all students, not just student athletes. The NCAA is quick to point out that in general, student athletes do slightly better than non-student athletes when it comes to graduating. And they believe their new statistical analysis is more accurate and illuminating than the federal graduation statistics.

The NCAA notes that:

63 percent of Division I student-athletes who began college as freshmen in 2000 graduated within six years, compared to 62 percent of students at Division I institutions, according to the federal data.

In particular, African-American student-athletes are graduating at a rate seven points higher than African-American students in general (53 percent to 46 percent). African-American male student-athletes are graduating at a rate 10 points higher than African-American male students, 49 percent to 39 percent.

White student-athletes graduate three points higher than their student body peers, at 67 percent to 64 percent. This is due in part to the fact that the graduation rate for white female student-athletes is seven points higher than white female students (74 percent to 66 percent).

So I guess the best advice anyone can give is, study hard, play well, and do your best to graduate!

Student athletes and their families have always known it is not easy balancing the demands of performing at a high level in collegiate sports while keeping up with one’s grades.

To begin with, student athletes must meet the following NCAA requirements to participate in sports and/or receive an athletics scholarship during their first year:

Graduate from high school; Complete these 14 core courses:

- 4 years of English

- 2 years of math (algebra 1 or higher)

- 2 years of natural or physical science (including one year of lab science if offered by your high school)

- 1 extra year of English, math or natural or physical science

- 2 years of social science

- 3 years of extra core courses (from any category above, or foreign language, nondoctrinal religion or philosophy);  

Earn a minimum required grade-point average in your core courses; and

Earn a combined SAT or ACT sum score that matches your core course grade-point average on the NCAA test score sliding scale … for example, a 2.400 core-course grade-point average needs an 860 SAT).

Student athletes who meet these requirements can practice or compete for their college or university during their first year of college; can receive an athletics scholarship during their first year of college; and can play four seasons in their sport if they maintain their eligibility from year to year.

There are now more than 400,000 students athletes in the United States and the numbers climb each year.

The NCAA is increasingly aware of the stress and challenges student athletes face.  From May 25-29, they’ll be hosting a conference in Orlando, FL for more than 700 student-athletes to discuss issues that affect them on their campuses and in their communities.  The conference which used to be called the NCAA Student-Athlete Leadership Conference is now known as the Development Conference.

According to Robert Vowels, vice-president of education services at the NCAA:

the conference will help student-athletes find their voice to shape their future and make a commitment to lead on campus and in the community.

“With the new focus of the Development Conference, we’ll also place more emphasis on enhancing the leadership skills of the student-athletes, which not only helps them in their academic and athletic setting, but also better prepares them for life experiences after they graduate,” said Vowels.

Student-athletes will discuss topics such as game environment, gender equity, religion in sport, social networking, EKG testing, mental health and nutrition. They will also discuss division-specific issues, create dialogue surrounding possible solutions to division-specific issues and discuss potential career direction.  

 

As student athletes gather in Orlando, it might be helpful to put the problems facing college sports in perspective. A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor highlights some alarming trends: “College sports programs lose money and fail to educate their athletes.”

Problem One: colleges are spending an enormous amount of money on sports. You might ask if this money could be better spent on purely educational programs. According to the Monitor:

One NCAA report on revenues and expenses of big-time athletic programs (Division I) for the first time shows that high-profile athletics are, on balance, a money-losing proposition. In other words, they’re a significant drain on these educational institutions.

While sports expenses at these schools rose 23 percent from 2004 to 2006, revenues (ticket sales, etc.) expanded only 16 percent. Just 17 of the 300-plus sports programs made a profit. All but one of those were among a few high-profile schools that regularly go to bowl games.

What’s more, schools subsidize about a quarter of their athletics. For the non-bowl-eligible, lower-profile schools, their budgets were 70 percent subsidized.

Just how “big-time” is college sports? The report didn’t name names, but it did say one school spent more than $101 million on its sports programs in fiscal 2006.

Problem Two: Student athletes aren’t doing as well in the classroom as they are on the field. According to the Monitor:

A second NCAA study asks how athletes perform in the classroom, even as the NCAA stiffens its penalties for schools that fail to meet a minimum standard. That standard, called an Academic Progress Rate (APR), takes into account athletes’ grades and graduation rates.

The NCAA’s report shows that only about 60 percent of athletes at the nation’s Division I schools graduate within six years. Among high-profile, revenue-producing sports programs, about 2 out of 5 schools had basketball teams that ranked below the APR threshold, and about 1 of 3 baseball and football teams failed to make that minimum standard.

I put a picture of Candace Parker up above because she is a shining example of the successful student athlete. She is an extraordinary basketball player who led her Tennessee team to the 2007 NCAA championship. But, even better, Parker earned a 3.35 grade-point average in sports management.

In the weeks to come, we’ll be blogging about the challenges and successes of the student athlete. Join in and check back often.