Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson says that it will take more than mere rule-making to ensure a suitable academic climate for many student-athletes.

Jackson, who met April 20 with senior NCAA staff members, said that more attention should be paid to making certain that institutions have support systems in place to help student-athletes from economically disadvantaged backgrounds succeed academically.

"The community from which these kids come is not attached to what happens once they are taken away," Jackson said. "Once they are taken away -- out of their parental setting, out of their church setting, out of their cultural setting -- they have the issue of cultural adjustments.

"They also leave their base of accountability. Increasing graduation rates must involve parents, ministers, disk jockeys, the barbers, the beauticians -- the community must be part of sustaining that youth and his or her development to a logical conclusion."

Jackson said the current system is an extension of a culture in which low expectations for young black males is the norm.

"Banks red-lining with limited loans, they're part of a cultural red-lining that kind of dumbs down expectations," he said. "But from the same ghettos that come rappers come opera singers, too. The same ghettos that are producing social delinquents are producing Ph.Ds as well.

"There's a real exploitation of cultural stereotypes that keeps marginalizing our youth. You take those kids from a marginalized environment and put them on a Big Ten basketball court, and before you've made an adjustment academically from often less than a first-class high-school education, they're now the center of attention for an institution whose proper interest is academic and uses athletics as a tool for its own glamour."

He drew a parallel between the Biblical tale of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and the current state of college athletics.

"In Biblical times, King Nebuchadnezzar sent his eunuch out annually to look for the kids who had a knowledge in science and whose track record was unblemished," Jackson said. "He was a recruiter, the eunuch. And once he took them out of their ghetto environment, they changed their names. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego weren't their names -- they are the names they were given.

"At some point in time, those boys rebelled against the values of that culture. There's a whole dimension here of being taken out of their environment and leaving the other children behind. Somehow, some way, we must expand the cultural base."

Acknowledging that some athletes suffer from "study-deficit disorder," Jackson committed to working with the NCAA to inspire greater will to study and perform academically.

"Athletically, our students pay whatever price they must pay to achieve -- by the conditioning year-round, by practicing in inclement weather, by strenuous workouts in the gym," he said. "They work hard at being the best athletes in the world, and they achieve it.

"The emphasis to make the academic development parallel is not there. You look at the data you have here about how many schools have zero graduation rates among black athletes or how many schools now avoid revealing graduation rates. We want to work with the NCAA to make information about graduation transparent. The NCAA's interest and our community interest -- we have shared values with Dr. (Myles) Brand."