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“Using the GSR and APR to tout graduation success and increased academic standards is undoubtedly savvy marketing and public relations, but these metrics are fundamentally nothing more than measures of how successful athletic departments are at keeping athletes eligible, and have increasingly fostered acts of academic dishonesty and devalued higher education in a frantic search for eligibility and retention points.”

Gerald Gurney (UD sat on a panel with him at a sports conference a few years ago) and Richard Southall examine the latest NCAA bullshit: Academic Progress Rate scores. Since APR is all about a sports school having the money to play the system by coming up with phony courses, elaborate waivers, etc., etc., the only universities that end up getting to be the dummies eliminated from competition are the non-rich ones.

The writers feature “the recent academic scandal at the University of North Carolina,” a well-heeled school with notorious jock doc Julius Nyang’oro. Rather than suffer any institutional penalty – even a mild verbal put-down – Nyang’oro has been rewarded for years of outrageous academic fraud by a retirement with full honors. For a job well done.

Margaret Soltan, August 10, 2012 4:42AM
Posted in: sport

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2 Responses to ““Using the GSR and APR to tout graduation success and increased academic standards is undoubtedly savvy marketing and public relations, but these metrics are fundamentally nothing more than measures of how successful athletic departments are at keeping athletes eligible, and have increasingly fostered acts of academic dishonesty and devalued higher education in a frantic search for eligibility and retention points.””

  1. Mr Punch Says:

    Cf. Frank Deford’s view that Joe Paterno was “keeping Sandusky eligible.”

  2. Barbara Says:

    I took the Basic college math at college. It was one of those thousand student lectures, that had small recitations as well. A friend was scheduled in a recitation that was all football players. Prior to the final, each recitation was given a sample exam to take home for practice. Since two is always better than one, my friend and I shared our samples and even had the math center tutor review our work to make sure it was correct and that we knew how to solve the types of problems on the exam. I was shocked when I took the exam and found that the “sample” my friend was given in her football player heavy class was the exam. It was the highest score I ever got in math. I felt like I cheated even though I put a great deal of work into preparing for the exam. I will never know how I would have faired on an honest test.

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