Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame, where graduates come with gridiron fame. The Fighting Irish are in the national collegiate championship football game Monday with a 100 percent Graduation Success Rate for their African-American players, tied for first with Rice University. Among the 70 teams in this season’s bowl games, Notre Dame also tied with Northwestern for a 97 percent overall graduation rate.
But cheer not just for Notre Dame. Fifty-six teams, a record 80 percent, scored either a “Touchdown” or a “First Down” in my 17th annual Graduation Gap Bowl. Touchdowns are scored by teams with graduation rates of at least 50 percent for black and white players, and with racial gaps of less than 15 percentage points. Notre Dame’s opponent, Alabama, earned First Down honors with very good graduation rates, but too big of a gap between black and white players to make my end zone of education.
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A feel better article, but the cynic wonders whether some of these factories are just creating courses/credits that allow their underpaid athletic employees to "graduate". I cannot picture most of the "win or get booted" coaches at the highest level giving a damn if a player goes to class or what happens to him after he's used up his eligibility. I would prefer a system that paid players on a scale increasing with each year. They would be employees of the university and, as such, could earn a degree free of charge if they wanted to do so. I would also make it a life-time opportunity if, after not making it in the pros that they were sure they would be at 17, they could go back and get that degree instead of just pumping gas.
Why do we never see articles about state university graduate student admission numbers compared with the state university's graduate student sucessful graduation?
Articles provide the comparison rates between Blacks and White university students admission & graduation rates and the statistical differences within national collegiate sports.
But lets look at the basics. The state universities and their admission of students to graduate programs and the state universities successful graduation of their admitted graduate students. What kind of percentage do you think you would see with those numbers????
The numbers of students admitted to the graduate programs and the numbers of non-graduating students from state universities, such as the UMB, would be a stunning eye-opener to reality.
Thanks for another go 'round of this useless column for the year. Do they pay you less this week because most of the page is taken up by charts?