… The survival of big-time intercollegiate athletics (principally revenue generating sports like basketball and football) is dependent upon what some call the “big lie.” As Drake University provost emeritus Jon Ericson explains: “It is a myth that you can take a student who is academically unprepared for higher education, a student who has a job on his team that requires 20 to 30 hours a week that causes him to miss numerous classes and come dead tired to others, and expect him to acquire a university education.”
It simply can’t be done — unless, of course, there is a complicitious faculty and administration. In the name of winning, grossly unprepared high school students are frequently admitted and are then exposed to a phony curriculum. The formula for success on the playing fields and staying academically eligible often include[s] no-show courses and dubious independent study. The academic magic can also include the pressuring of faculty to change grades or drop requirements altogether. When educational compromises like this are made for athletes, what’s the point of having big-time college athletics?
Former Tufts University provost Sol Gittleman once remarked: “Division I-A college athletics has nothing to do with education.”…
A psychology professor writes in the Albany Times-Union.
October 18th, 2009 at 9:07AM
I work at a place with Div-III athletics, and this article is largely right that they produce a decent crop of scholar-athletes. Our women’s lacrosse team especially have always struck me as pretty marvelously organized students: they’re ON IT at the beginning of the semester in terms of letting me know when their games are, working out how to make up for these absences, etc. It’s impressive.
Largely right. Barring the occasional morons, that is.
October 20th, 2009 at 2:03PM
This is absolute garbage to make a blanket statement such as this one by Jon Ericson.
I am proud to have gone to Drake and know many very successful former student athletes in many walks of life, starting with the Barrington Il high school principal who played football at Drake a few years ago.
While I am sure his comments represent a thread of truth, not everyone who goes to college begin their lifetime of learning strictly in the classroom, which is of course hard for a "former Provost" to understand.