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NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Centerpiece - Admissions needs academic focus
Schools to put education horse before athletics cart
Schools to put education horse before athletics cart
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By Gary T. Brown
The NCAA News
The NCAA News
Among outcomes from the NCAA’s exploration into the diploma-mill issue was a renewed focus on college admissions procedures that return the academic horse properly in front of the athletics cart.
Right now the culture is vice versa at some institutions when it comes to recruiting and admissions. Though few cases are documented, anecdotal evidence suggests that campus admissions officers sometimes are backed into a corner when coaches offer recruits scholarships without first nailing down whether they meet university admissions standards.
It’s another “unintended consequence” in which the NCAA must extend its academic jurisdiction, since the “athletics-first” evaluation inappropriately positions the coach to make de facto admissions decisions based on athletics skill rather than academic fit.
To reverse the trend, a proposal from the Division I Board of Directors and the Division II Presidents Council already is in the 2006-07 legislative cycle (it was approved in Division II this month) to require prospects to have registered with the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse and be placed on an institutional request list even before they take an official visit or are offered financial aid.
Interestingly, the Division I Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet said this fall that it would support the Division I proposal only if it were enhanced to require at least six semesters worth of academic credentials to be submitted to the Clearinghouse as well — an indication that the governance structure is prepared to be aggressive about changing institutional behavior.
“The current environment allows prospects to receive ‘benefits’ from athletics – the opportunity to take an official visit, the opportunity to have an athletics scholarship offered verbally and in writing — before anything is done with the prospect’s academic credentials,” said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for membership services. “We need to move the academic evaluation ahead of the athletic evaluation. It’s not only sound academic policy, but it also sends the right message. That’s clearly within the NCAA’s academic jurisdiction.”
Such turnabout would be fair play to University of Virginia Dean of Admissions John Blackburn, who in 38 years of admissions work has witnessed his share of deans at other institutions being backed into decisions based on athletics scholarship offers that already had been tendered. “I probably haven’t seen it all in my tenure,” he said, “but I’ve seen a lot.”
Blackburn, who is where the buck stops with all admissions decisions at Virginia, would support increased NCAA attention in the national admissions arena. While he said the culture is more academically driven than it was 15 years ago, he still knows of schools at which someone other than the senior admissions officer occasionally makes decisions. “We feel strongly here that’s not the way to do it,” he said. “But I do know of cases where the coach pretty much says who’s coming and the admissions office must make space for them.”
At Virginia, Blackburn advocates what he calls “a creative tension” among coaches and admissions officers who understand the other’s challenges but who also have their eyes on the same prize: a quality collegiate experience for the student.
“Coaches here know my role and that the students we admit need to be successful, and I know their role, too, that they want students who will be fine athletes who aren’t on academic probation all the time,” Blackburn said. “Keeping kids eligible and checking on them at every turn is not what coaches want to do. They want fine athletes who are fine students as well. I understand what they’re up against and they know what I’m up against.
“I’ve been around long enough that I can get along with coaches, but I’m certainly not going to admit a weak student just because the coach asks me to do it.”
As Blackburn believes the culture is improving, so does University of Washington Athletics Director Todd Turner, who was a member of an NCAA panel several years ago that began building the academic-reform structure currently underway in Division I. He attributes the current culture shift to the Academic Progress Rate and the penalties that result from team under-performance. It would be counterproductive, Turner said, for the athletics community to invest much time and effort in a recruit who didn’t have the background to succeed academically.
“The key piece is the APR,” Turner said, “because now for the first time there is a competitive penalty tied to academic progress and retention. If you’re bringing in students who aren’t going to make progress and be fully engaged academically, you’re going to pay a competitive penalty (scholarship losses). It’s a different landscape now and I think coaches are much more engaged in that assessment.”
Turner, who was a member of the Division I working group that developed the APR as a metric to hold institutions accountable for their student-athletes’ academic success, said ensuring an admissions “fit” was one of the primary motivators behind creating the APR.
“It was to help ensure that institutions aren’t exploiting students by putting them in settings where they can’t be successful academically,” he said. “Coaches, admissions officers and athletics directors are all aware of that now. Academic reform has helped build it into the college culture.”
That climate will be further fortified with the proposal to require early Clearinghouse registration, which would become effective August 1. But Turner and others say the athletics community shouldn’t have to rely on legislation to do the right thing.
“The most important piece starts well before the students are presented to the admissions office. It starts with the coaching staff understanding what is reasonable and what’s not as far as academic expectations are concerned,” he said. “Under the reform paradigm, coaches are having to spend a good deal of time pre-assessing a student’s ability to have success — not just what it takes to be admitted, but what it takes to have academic success at that institution.”
Right now the culture is vice versa at some institutions when it comes to recruiting and admissions. Though few cases are documented, anecdotal evidence suggests that campus admissions officers sometimes are backed into a corner when coaches offer recruits scholarships without first nailing down whether they meet university admissions standards.
It’s another “unintended consequence” in which the NCAA must extend its academic jurisdiction, since the “athletics-first” evaluation inappropriately positions the coach to make de facto admissions decisions based on athletics skill rather than academic fit.
To reverse the trend, a proposal from the Division I Board of Directors and the Division II Presidents Council already is in the 2006-07 legislative cycle (it was approved in Division II this month) to require prospects to have registered with the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse and be placed on an institutional request list even before they take an official visit or are offered financial aid.
Interestingly, the Division I Academics/Eligibility/Compliance Cabinet said this fall that it would support the Division I proposal only if it were enhanced to require at least six semesters worth of academic credentials to be submitted to the Clearinghouse as well — an indication that the governance structure is prepared to be aggressive about changing institutional behavior.“The current environment allows prospects to receive ‘benefits’ from athletics – the opportunity to take an official visit, the opportunity to have an athletics scholarship offered verbally and in writing — before anything is done with the prospect’s academic credentials,” said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for membership services. “We need to move the academic evaluation ahead of the athletic evaluation. It’s not only sound academic policy, but it also sends the right message. That’s clearly within the NCAA’s academic jurisdiction.”
Such turnabout would be fair play to University of Virginia Dean of Admissions John Blackburn, who in 38 years of admissions work has witnessed his share of deans at other institutions being backed into decisions based on athletics scholarship offers that already had been tendered. “I probably haven’t seen it all in my tenure,” he said, “but I’ve seen a lot.”
Blackburn, who is where the buck stops with all admissions decisions at Virginia, would support increased NCAA attention in the national admissions arena. While he said the culture is more academically driven than it was 15 years ago, he still knows of schools at which someone other than the senior admissions officer occasionally makes decisions. “We feel strongly here that’s not the way to do it,” he said. “But I do know of cases where the coach pretty much says who’s coming and the admissions office must make space for them.”
At Virginia, Blackburn advocates what he calls “a creative tension” among coaches and admissions officers who understand the other’s challenges but who also have their eyes on the same prize: a quality collegiate experience for the student.
“Coaches here know my role and that the students we admit need to be successful, and I know their role, too, that they want students who will be fine athletes who aren’t on academic probation all the time,” Blackburn said. “Keeping kids eligible and checking on them at every turn is not what coaches want to do. They want fine athletes who are fine students as well. I understand what they’re up against and they know what I’m up against.
“I’ve been around long enough that I can get along with coaches, but I’m certainly not going to admit a weak student just because the coach asks me to do it.”
As Blackburn believes the culture is improving, so does University of Washington Athletics Director Todd Turner, who was a member of an NCAA panel several years ago that began building the academic-reform structure currently underway in Division I. He attributes the current culture shift to the Academic Progress Rate and the penalties that result from team under-performance. It would be counterproductive, Turner said, for the athletics community to invest much time and effort in a recruit who didn’t have the background to succeed academically.
“The key piece is the APR,” Turner said, “because now for the first time there is a competitive penalty tied to academic progress and retention. If you’re bringing in students who aren’t going to make progress and be fully engaged academically, you’re going to pay a competitive penalty (scholarship losses). It’s a different landscape now and I think coaches are much more engaged in that assessment.”
Turner, who was a member of the Division I working group that developed the APR as a metric to hold institutions accountable for their student-athletes’ academic success, said ensuring an admissions “fit” was one of the primary motivators behind creating the APR.
“It was to help ensure that institutions aren’t exploiting students by putting them in settings where they can’t be successful academically,” he said. “Coaches, admissions officers and athletics directors are all aware of that now. Academic reform has helped build it into the college culture.”
That climate will be further fortified with the proposal to require early Clearinghouse registration, which would become effective August 1. But Turner and others say the athletics community shouldn’t have to rely on legislation to do the right thing.
“The most important piece starts well before the students are presented to the admissions office. It starts with the coaching staff understanding what is reasonable and what’s not as far as academic expectations are concerned,” he said. “Under the reform paradigm, coaches are having to spend a good deal of time pre-assessing a student’s ability to have success — not just what it takes to be admitted, but what it takes to have academic success at that institution.”
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