Is this a racist article? Is any mention of the fact that most basketball players are black and that they don't get very good educations racist? Knowing Cosmicforce, if he said anything that implied that, he would be speaking from a sense not of racism but regret about the inherent inequality/unfairness:
Report: Most Black NCAA Basketball Student-Athletes Aren’t Graduating
Date: Tuesday, March 15, 2005
By: Sherrel Wheeler Stewart, BlackAmericaWeb.com
The NCAA Division I basketball “Big Dance” kicks into full gear this week, but if you look at the graduation rate of black athletes who score the big buckets on the court during the tournaments, you’ll find that many are left on the bench, according to a new study by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport.
The study, called “Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2005 NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournament Teams,” shows that less than one-half of the schools in the men’s tournament this year graduated 40 percent or more of their black basketball student-athletes.
The study also shows that only 10 colleges graduated 70 percent or more of their black basketball student-athletes.
“In last year’s report, there were 58 NCAA teams that did not graduate one single African-American male basketball player. This year, 45 schools didn’t. That’s progress, but it’s still scandalous,” Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
The study examines graduation rates over a six-year period, for the freshmen classes of 1994-1995, 1996-1997 and 1997-1998.
Lapchick said basketball has the “worse track record” for graduation rates. He also maintained that some of the problems with racial disparities in graduation rates for men are beginning to show up in the graduation rates for women basketball players.
Among the greatest disparities in the study are Georgia Tech, where nine percent of the black basketball players graduated, compared with 50 percent of white players; University of Kentucky, where zero percent of black players graduated, compared to 25 percent of white players, and UCLA, where 11 percent of the black players graduated, and 100 percent of the white players graduated.
Officials with the NCAA said they are aware of the problems and are taking steps to improve the academic performance of all student athletes and eliminate disparities between the races.
“We have set in place some strict measures of accountability and academic guidelines that can give colleges and coaches a real-time snapshot of academic performance,” NCAA spokesman Eric Christianson told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “We know there is room for improvement.”
The new guidelines take effect with the 2005-2006 academic year. Once they are fully implemented, colleges and universities can face the loss of allotted scholarships and other penalties if they do not graduate roughly 50 percent of the student athletes in a specific program.
“When you look at the overall graduation rates for men’s teams, 43 of them would not be eligible for the tournament if a 50 percent minimum graduation rate for overall basketball student athletes was in place on Selection Sunday,” Lapchick said. “For the women’s teams, eight would have been ineligible if the same standard was applied.”
Overall on Division I teams, 51 percent of white male basketball student-athletes graduated compared, with only 38 percent of blacks, said Lapchick.
“Race is an ongoing academic issue, reflected in the continued gap between graduation rates for white and African-American student-athletes,” Lapchick said. “While rates for both groups have improved over the last few years, a significant disparity remains between graduation rates for white and African-American basketball student-athletes.”
The report also showed:
• The graduation rate for black male students as a whole is only 34 percent, versus the overall rate of 59 percent for male white students, a 25 percentage point gap.
• Of the 328 Division I teams, 45 did not graduate a single black basketball student-athlete in six years. This is in a sport in which 58 percent of Division I male basketball student-athletes are black.
• There were 27 Division I women’s programs that did not graduate a single black basketball female student-athlete in six years, reviewed for the report. At the same time, black female basketball student-athletes reached a record-high level of participation.
• At the majority of the schools, black basketball student-athletes had lower graduation rates than their teammates -- significantly less, in many instances.
Two schools in the men’s tournament -- Bucknell University and Utah State University -- had a 100 percent graduation rate for men’s basketball student athletes. Bucknell, which will play Kansas on Friday, has six black players on its current 13-member team, according to its website, while Utah State has five black players on its 17-member team. Utah State is scheduled to play Arizona on Thursday.
Other schools in the top 10 for men’s basketball student-athlete graduation rates are Stanford University, 92 percent; Mississippi State University, 75 percent; University of Wisconsin, Madison, 73 percent; St. Mary’s College of California, 71 percent; Villanova University, 67 percent; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 67 percent; Michigan State University, 64 percent and University of Kansas, 60 percent.
blackamericaweb.com |
