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AP IMPACT: Schools invest in athletes' degrees
2008-12-20
OXFORD, Miss. - From the moment he stepped on campus, 320-pound tackle Michael Oher seemed destined to be a star on Mississippi's football team and a failure in its classrooms. Muzi.com News 10084991-1 (muzi.com)Oher was the son of a crack-addicted single mom, and as a teen could barely read. His educational record -- 11 schools in nine years as he moved from home to home in Memphis -- read like an indictment of a failed education system. Muzi.com News 10084991-2 (muzi.com) But four years later, at a school that graduates fewer than 60 percent of all students within six years, Oher has cleared every hurdle and nearly earned his degree -- all that stands between him and graduation are a final semester and workouts for the NFL draft. Muzi.com News 10084991-3 (muzi.com) "I haven't struggled a bit in college," the All-American offensive lineman says. "It's been a breeze." Muzi.com News 10084991-4 (muzi.com) It's a tribute to Oher's determination and character, to be sure. Muzi.com News 10084991-5 (muzi.com) His story also says something about the state of big-time college athletics. Muzi.com News 10084991-6 (muzi.com) Like a lot of other athletes at Ole Miss and elsewhere, Oher got not only tutoring help but a full range of academic support services throughout his career. At Ole Miss, 14 full-time staffers line up tutors for student-athletes, help them choose classes, monitor study halls and check attendance. More than 60 percent of the Rebels' 390 athletes receive at least some tutoring, and together they averaged about 1,000 sessions a week this fall. Muzi.com News 10084991-7 (muzi.com) Such services are not unusual. Muzi.com News 10084991-8 (muzi.com) The last five years have seen an astounding jump in the time, money and resources devoted to academic support for student-athletes, even as some faculty complain that just plain students are being left behind. To learn more about the trend, The Associated Press surveyed the 65 schools from the six major conferences involved in the Bowl Championship Series plus independent Notre Dame. Muzi.com News 10084991-9 (muzi.com) The AP started work before the first kickoff of the season and eventually obtained at least some financial information from 45 schools about the resources they devote to graduating athletes. Muzi.com News 10084991-10 (muzi.com) The picture formed by the data is one of schools frequently spending more than $1 million annually on academic support, with some spending hundreds of thousands of dollars more in 2008 than they did in 2004, the AP found. Eight BCS schools reported spending increases of more than 70 percent in the last five years. Four -- South Florida, Illinois, Georgia and Kansas -- more than doubled spending. Muzi.com News 10084991-11 (muzi.com) Helping athletes graduate has become its own academic profession. A national group for people who work in the field has nearly doubled its membership to around 1,000 in just two years. Many work in new academic centers devoted exclusively to athletes. Muzi.com News 10084991-12 (muzi.com) Behind the spending binge, fueled by both public and private funds, are toughened NCAA regulations that now punish schools for poor academic performance. Muzi.com News 10084991-13 (muzi.com) "Now, when I go around and speak on campuses and speak to coaches and athletic programs and to student-athletes, they want to brag about how well they're doing academically," NCAA president Myles Brand said. "They want to show me the academic study centers. The coaches want to talk about and brag about their APR (Academic Progress Report). All that is good. A few years ago, that was the last thing people wanted to talk about. Muzi.com News 10084991-14 (muzi.com) "It's changed the environment for athletics insofar as it takes seriously now academic progress and accomplishment. There's just no question about it." Muzi.com News 10084991-15 (muzi.com) Ole Miss opened a remodeled, 23,500 square-foot center a year ago that cost $5 million. Muzi.com News 10084991-16 (muzi.com) Up the road in Starkville, Mississippi State recently cut the ribbon on a $10 million building that features group and individual study areas, private cubicles for tutoring and the latest in computer and video conferencing, plus a cafeteria and weight room. A school that used to tutor students in a basement now has a facility where 12-foot-tall front doors open onto an elaborate display of great moments in school history that's meant to wow recruits and their parents. Muzi.com News 10084991-17 (muzi.com) A few weeks after Mississippi State opened its center, South Carolina upped the ante with a groundbreaking ceremony for a $13 million facility. Muzi.com News 10084991-18 (muzi.com) Plans call for a new, three-story center at Oregon. Muzi.com News 10084991-19 (muzi.com) Oklahoma, with a 30,000 square-foot facility that cost between $7 million and $8 million, spent about $2.45 million helping all its athletes last year. Muzi.com News 10084991-20 (muzi.com) Florida, the Sooners' opponent in next month's national championship game, spent $1.67 million. Texas ($1.90 million), Ohio State ($1.89 million), Kentucky ($1.86 million), Tennessee ($1.83 million) and Georgia ($1.77 million) are in the same league. Muzi.com News 10084991-21 (muzi.com) Athletic departments say if such facilities are extravagant, it only demonstrates their commitment to academic success. Even some critics of college sports agree that when schools recruit often underprepared students, and demand thousands of hours of practice and travel time, they owe them extra help. Sure enough, 79 percent of student-athletes graduated in 2008 -- a new high, according to the NCAA. Rates are up 3 percent since 2005, when the NCAA put in place a new system for calculating the graduation rate and academic support services were growing. Muzi.com News 10084991-22 (muzi.com) But there's also a range of criticism. Faculty have raised concerns about oversight, and the growing disparity between concierge-style academic support for athletes and what non-athletes receive. Muzi.com News 10084991-23 (muzi.com) "It grates," said Kenneth Holum, a longtime University of Maryland history professor and chair of the faculty senate. "Why are the athletes more deserving than the other students? We try hard to give all the students an equal chance to profit from the material we're providing them, and other students don't have this opportunity." Muzi.com News 10084991-24 (muzi.com) Teachers like Holum also believe that the growing academic support system hurts educational values. They worry student-athletes get so much help that they never learn the lessons of personal responsibility. Muzi.com News 10084991-25 (muzi.com) They also claim the trend exacerbates the isolation of student-athletes -- not just socially, but educationally, too -- in clusters of courses and majors where they are steered because of scheduling or perceived difficulty. Muzi.com News 10084991-26 (muzi.com) "They're steered to the courses that they know they can pass," Holum said. "If the effort is to keep them eligible, they're being shortchanged." Muzi.com News 10084991-27 (muzi.com) ___ Muzi.com News 10084991-28 (muzi.com) Advisers to athletes see their work differently. They consider themselves educators. And when they lay out the case in favor of a big investment in academic support, they note that the students they work with often are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Muzi.com News 10084991-29 (muzi.com) "I'm not saying a regular student is not coming from a single-parent home," said Ericka Lavender, an academic adviser to North Carolina State's football team. "But they're not having to get up at 4:30 in the morning and go all day, and still worry about whether their little brother or sister ate dinner or made it home from school." Muzi.com News 10084991-30 (muzi.com) Several N.C. State advisers emphasized they do a lot more than line up tutors. They teach study skills and offer career and personal advice. Increasingly, those in the field have graduate degrees in subjects like psychology and special education. Muzi.com News 10084991-31 (muzi.com) Many are former athletes, such as Natasha Criss, who works with Maryland's men's basketball team. When she came to Maryland as a track-and-field competitor in 1988, there were only four staffers working from cramped quarters in the old Cole Field House. Now she's one of 15 full-time staffers working out of a corporate-like suite in Maryland's Comcast Center arena. Muzi.com News 10084991-32 (muzi.com) She's pushing the athletes hard. In 2006, none of Maryland's four seniors left with a degree. All three seniors on last season's team graduated. Muzi.com News 10084991-33 (muzi.com) "She helps us pick our classes, she checks our classes. To be honest with you, our graduation rate is getting better because of her," said forward David Neal, the lone senior on this year's team. "She's hounding us to do our work. We have a mandatory study hall because of her. Her job is to make us graduate, and she's doing a great job of it." Muzi.com News 10084991-34 (muzi.com) ___ Muzi.com News 10084991-35 (muzi.com) Critics readily acknowledge student-athletes are entitled to academic help. But the rapid spending growth makes them skeptical the money is being doled out thoughtfully. Muzi.com News 10084991-36 (muzi.com) A big question is oversight: Whom do the academic advisers work for? The players? Coaches? The university? Muzi.com News 10084991-37 (muzi.com) "It's a straightforward potential conflict of interest," said Nathan Tublitz, a University of Oregon neuroscientist who works with the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an alliance of Division I faculty senates dedicated to academic reform. Muzi.com News 10084991-38 (muzi.com) Since programs need athletes to stay eligible, "it's in their best interest to find advisers to make sure they will be eligible, whether they do it the right way or the wrong way," he said. Muzi.com News 10084991-39 (muzi.com)
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