Progress-toward-degree requirements

Michael J. Cusack, director of athletics
Wright State University
Chronicle of Higher Education

“The APR has at its core the positive goal of setting expectations and benchmarks for student-athletes. Given the demands placed on student-athletes by their coaches and athletics schedules, some direction and academic mentoring are essential to ensure that students earn and receive a full education. But while the APR’s satisfactory-grades requirement achieves that goal, the benchmarks for timely progress are too burdensome. To establish eligibility, athletes must complete a minimum of 40 percent of the required units for a degree by the beginning of the third year of college enrollment, 60 percent by the beginning of the fourth year, and 80 percent by the beginning of the fifth year.

“Thus, student-athletes must arrive on the campus with a fair amount of certainty about what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Unlike the rest of the student body, athletes must start accumulating the credits necessary for their degrees almost immediately — without the opportunity to experiment with courses to broaden their intellectual background or lead them in a different direction. If they do have any doubts later on, they cannot switch majors without risking their eligibility to compete.”

Sidney McPhee, president
Middle Tennessee State University
Chronicle of Higher Education

“We’re forcing young students to really make uninformed decisions just to stay eligible. We see a lot of folks getting into majors that perhaps don’t match their interest and abilities, and that may be problematic. I think we really need to take a hard look at this.”

Athletics expendutures

Andrew Zimbalist, professor of economics
Smith College
The New York Times

“(Schools) get into these arms races, in the hope that they can have a winning team, which will bring in more revenue, which will help pay their escalating costs. But of the 119 (Football Bowl Subdivision) colleges in any particular year, only 30 or 40 football programs probably run a true surplus.”

Myles Brand, president
NCAA
USA Today

“You’re getting a lot more tension in the university. And no one is talking about it. (It’s) almost a quiet crisis. That tension between faculty needs, academic needs and the desire of athletic departments to be competitive is really a very serious, and growing, issue.”

Nathan Tublitz, co-chair
Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics
USA Today

I think it’s a serious crisis. It’s not sustainable. You can’t have growth rates three times greater than the rest of the university — from a part that’s just an auxiliary. It’s not the primary function of the university.”

Nancy Zimpher, president
University of Cincinnati
USA Today

“I think that kind of public awareness and accountability (anticipated from the collaborative effort by the NCAA and National Association of College and University Business Officers to report financial “dashboard indicators”) is going to go some distance in saying to people, ‘What’s reasonable?’”