An alert reader sent this bit of news on to me:
Graduation rates for black athletes in football and men’s basketball at Power 5 conference schools are increasing on average, but 40 percent of schools showed declines in such rates during the past two years, according to a new report on racial inequality in college sports.
The report, released Sunday by the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center, shows Power 5 graduation rates for black football and men’s basketball players have increased by an average of 2.5 percent since 2016. Thirty-six schools in Power 5 conferences had increases — by an average of 6.5 percent — led by Kansas State (18 percent), Louisville (18 percent) and Vanderbilt (17 percent). But 40 percent of Power 5 schools have had a decrease in graduation rates among black football and men’s basketball players, with the biggest drops in the past two years occurring at Georgia (15 percent), LSU (11 percent) and Ohio State (11 percent). [Emphasis added.]
Another point of Bulldog pride. Note that it’s concentrated.
Several schools among the lowest graduation rates for black football and basketball players — Ohio State, California, Georgia, Iowa, North Carolina — have graduation rates for all athletes that are 25 to 35 percentage points higher.
The study runs through the ’16-’17 academic year, so I’m guessing that doesn’t include the recent crop of early departures from the football team for this year’s NFL draft. In any event, it’s good to see how the Georgia Way adapts with the times. Perhaps the next issue of McGarity’s Minutes can spend some time on the subject.
If they’re not getting paid, at least student-athletes receive a valuable education as compensation for their athletic contributions to UGA.
Get The Picture 
I wonder what the cause of that drop is. I felt like UGA always did a pretty decent job with graduation rates, and our APR score was always decent.
A number that jumped out to me was that UGA black football players are graduating at a rate much lower than their non-athlete peers. And that UGA is the worst offender in that group.
“These undergraduate students entered college in 2007, 2008, 2009, and
2010 and graduated by 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.”
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That is shameful. I am wondering what mechanisms are in place at other institutions to help AA athletes graduate. There was an article in the Chronicle of Higher education last month that talked at length about a specific major at Auburn that 1/3 of Black athletes were enrolled in. To say that the article was unflattering would be an understatement. It is behind a paywall now and I can’t see it. There are so many things at play here it is hard to get a good grasp at what is going on. It would be good to see a breakdown at UGA and other schools and see the fields of study that are athlete heavy..There are so many bullshit majors at every school.
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Isn’t this something else we can blame on the 2013 recruiting class?
I don’t fault McGarity, the coaches or anyone inside the administration for this. With all of the academic resources available to the s-a that isn’t available to the normal student, there’s no excuse for a motivated s-a to get his degree.
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nope. These are the students from the 2007-2010 classes that should have graduated in 2013-2016.
Considering that transfers count as dropouts I think that what we are seeing reflected here is how unstable the program was from 2013 – 2016.
Coaching changes mean transfers. Transfers count as did not graduate in this case.
UGA still needs to do a better job graduating players.
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I didn’t read the article. I was being a bit snarky about the ‘13 class comment since everyone blamed everything that went wrong in 2016 on that class.
Thanks for the clarification, DP.
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I immediately assumed this was the 2013 class dragging us again so i checked.
Unfortunately that 2013 class hasnt even hit these numbers yet.
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Guilty party — CMR
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The coach is guilty for the players not taking care of their business in the classroom? Sorry, I don’t buy that. Just like the coach isn’t responsible for a student-athlete who is being a knucklehead. Eventually, there has to be some personal accountability for not taking advantage of all of the opportunities these guys are given to get a college degree.
A head coach and the staff can’t patrol the dorms and apartments that all of these guys live in. They can’t have plants in every bar in Athens to tell the coaches the players are there every night.
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I don’t believe this is a “where there’s smoke there’s fire” thing. There are varying reasons for the fall off. As eethomas stated above, the ’13 class was a disaster, also a few players do leave early and a few, after using their eligibility, lose interest in school. We allude to it all the time on this blog, “it” being that many of these kids are really not college material and would not even be in school were it they were not recruited to be student athletes.
Now the question boils down to why Georgia is last.
Maybe it’s because Georgia is a little tougher on student athletes even this long after Jan Kemp and a couple of other embarrassing incidents
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that some schools are graduating kids that didn’t honestly earn a degree on the same level that a non-athlete earned one.
We’ve all heard of the players who graduated from (some very highly regarded) schools and can’t read. It’s the unfortunate price we pay for having college football morph from being a bunch of school kids playing ball into a bunch of ball players getting invited to a school to play ball. Playing ball is their focus. That’s how it is.
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Nailed it.
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There are costs to admitting students who aren’t capable of (or unwilling to) doing the work in an environment where there is resistance to just passing football players because they’re football players.
We had two football players thrown out of school due to academic issues prior to their senior years: Caleb King and Paul Oliver.
You show me another SEC school where that has happened. At auburn somebody on the staff would write a paper for the player the player would sign their name and the prof would give them a C.
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Exactly. And Georgia doesn’t play this game because of a lady named Jan Kemp.
But this is what college football is. There are a lot of athletes that are very good students. There are a lot that are not. That doesn’t mean they are misguided or bad, it just means that they are taking what is being given in the way of an opportunity to play in the NFL (or NBA. whatever) developmental league. To pretend the system is anywhere near pure is the height of naivety.
Don’t know if it still goes on, but there was a school in this part of the country that had a pet High School to administer admission exams to academically struggling recruits. They always passed.
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Good job spinning that as a positive stat. Congratulations on having the lowest graduation rate in the country for AA athletes. It definitely proves Georgia has higher academic standards than Auburn.
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According to the US News & World Report rankings:
UGA is #16 in the ranking of best public universities.
Guess what? Clemson is at #23 while USCe sits at #46 … tied with Auburn.
The graduation stat for athletes in football and men’s basketball isn’t good, but guess what?
Athens > Columbia … again.
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You got me good. Nothing fires me up like academic ratings of schools I didn’t attend…
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I figured you as a South Carolina fan would want to know when you throw rocks you better not be living in a glass house.
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Sides is an SC guy?
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Seems to be bas d on his comments
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Your right. I’m not surprised SC is low on the list although 42 is better than expected. I do think SC does football player academics better than most schools and this seems to support that. Let’s be honest, no one really cares about how many players graduate, its about results on the field. Player graduation is only something you are proud of when your teams are losing.
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You’re
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Your probably a lot of fun to hang out with. Its a message board so get over it.
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No, it’s proper grammar. If you’re going to troll a Bulldog blog, at least show you’re educated.
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Get over yourself, you didn’t graduate from Georgia Tech….
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I appreciate the compliment.
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That explains a lot. I thought he might have been a 12 year old that found GTP by accident.
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So says Jay: https://youtu.be/TyXqF4qxOhY
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It’s only “spinning” if you can give me a single SEC starting football player removed from school due to academics prior to his senior year. If you can’t then you’ve been proven FOS and I’ve been proven correct.
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Most schools have more class than to publicly announce that the player is too dumb to be in school. It’s just a rule violation everywhere else.
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You are dumb aren’t you?
You’re saying there are unexplained non-disciplinary dismissals you could point that are comparable to Oliver and King but because of privacy concerns it’s unclear.
Ok, fine: Give me your top 5 suspects. Name five SEC starters who left school just prior to their senior seasons for “unnamed” reasons.
FWIW: nobody did a press release on King or Oliver but we found out because shit gets out. It just does.
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So you want me to search message boards to find inside information about why individual players are kicked out of school? I am sure other teams kick players off for academic reasons all the time.
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Sides, why don’t you go back to Facebook.
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Dawg19 is going to be pissed you didn’t use a question mark. How dare you use improper punctuation on a Georgia Bulldog blog.
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Chopdawg doesn’t troll the blog, Nitwit. Work on your reading comprehension while you’re at it.
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and I’m sure you’re FOS.
You don’t have to go to message boards.
Use the google.
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https://www.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-athletes-reading-scores/index.html
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(sigh)
Mary Willingham’s “research” was reviewed by 3 education and reading experts independently of each other — all professors at research universities.
All 3 found her work to be ciompletely inadequate to her claims. First, she used multiple choice vocabulary instruments to assess reading grade level – something the instrument itself explicitly says it should NOT be used for. On top of that, she mistabulated her results by a factor of 10 in the wrong direction. She turned 6% into 60%. So, she can’t follow directions, and she can’t multiply.
Willingham, by the way, earned her MA through an online program at UNC-G. Her thesis was reviewed by bloggers, and chunks of it were unattributed cut-and-paste. What a surprise.
And the fact that reporters like Ganim ate up what Willingham was willing to claim without bothering to do an ounce of fact-checking on it was just insanely irresponsible.
Almost none of WIllingham’s claims that could be fact-checked turned out to have any credible evidence to back them up. Kenneth Wainstein had unfettered access to UNC’s email systems, archives, and employees, and the only thing he had to say about Willingham after talking to her was that he found her less than credible and could not substantiate what she told him.
No question athletes get passed along – I was a grad student at an SEC school, and a special teams player I flunked magically moved to a C+ in time for the bowl game. He was completely literate and quite smart – he just wasn’t present, and he only turned in half the work. Did he do extra work for the professor in between my grade submission and the posting of final grades? Maybe, but I’m thinking probably not.
That doesn’t make anything Willingham or Ganim ever said on this subject worth repeating.
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This one is going to be great for seeing who read the article.
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What I can’t just assume I know the answers and apply for the job at the ajc, espn, fox news, cnn or any news media?
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How do these numbers compare to the general population numbers at their respective schools?
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UGA is the worst in the conference when you compare the rates of black SAs to black male students.
UGA is the 2nd worst when it comes to graduating black SAs, but 2nd best (vandy #1) in graduating black males students. Creating the largest delta.
So part of it is that UGA non-athletes did so well, but the other half is that the athletes did so poorly.
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Interesting data there. Thanks, DP.
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Entrance exams are racist, SAT is racist, ACT is racist……
Of course, the entire college experience is racist, as well.
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you triggered, snowflake?
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Sarcasm font…..
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What is racist is southern towns and counties opening private whites only “Christian academies” after intergration and then not giving a shit about the academics at the schools their kids don’t go to anymore. That’s racist. The poor folks of every stripe have suffered in schools the rich folks don’t give a damn about ever since.
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Do you know the difference between ‘private’ and ‘public’ schools? Where do cities, towns, and counties operate white only private schools? If they do, then that is racist. If they don’t, you are a giant waste of time.
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I do.
Here’s a partial list: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/12/in-southern-towns-segregation-academies-are-still-going-strong/266207/
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So private schools are now “segregation academies?” They even say in the article it is a private school. Every city/county in this country has private schools. Where I live and where I grew up have high schools that cost 10K-20K per year. No shit they are not diverse. Are you saying private schools, home schools, and religious schools should be outlawed?
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You’re dead set on setting a record for dumb today aren’t you?
I’m saying segregation was racist. I’m saying efforts to avoid integration was racist. I’m saying that the birth of private schools in southern towns in response to segration was racist and a way to avoid integration. I’m saying you’re stupid.
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Shit man. Segregation was racist. Who knew?
I am glad you have enlightened me. I would have never known. You are a modern day MLK.
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You’re a modern day Neanderthal.
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My kids go to a Christian private school, and it’s more diverse than the public charter they went to before we moved. My wife and I made a decision to send our kids to a school that would reflect our values and would reinforce the things we teach our kids at home … I can guarantee you being a racist isn’t one of those.
I’m a South Georgia public school kid who went to a one high school in the county that was highly diverse, and my wife was educated in DeKalb County public schools in high school and in Miami-Dade public schools before that. I pay my property taxes like anyone else and want public schools to be good because it’s good for the economy. There is no better way to combat poverty than to get a good K-12 education.
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Where we are the public schools are as segregated as any private school. All the mid-upper class whites live in suburbs near the coast and the blacks live in the city. It results in overcrowded suburban schools that are 90% white and inner city schools that are majority black (and growing Hispanic). Fortunately this city is pumping money in to ed programs in the inner city to attract suburban students. Our kids are in the Spanish immersion school in the city. It’s still not full so they talk about busing kids across town. There is no way around the problem of school integration. You want community schools but groups of people live together along race and economic lines.
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Two Corinthians walk into separate but equal “Christian academies” and find there are good people on both sides.
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I am eagerly anticipating the companion piece to this report outlining how the NFL and NBA also discriminate against black athletes.
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For all we know this is the downstream of the transfers after Pruitt took over as DC. I don’t believe for 1 second it was racially motivated but black players transferred and black students/nonathletes did not. Careful with statistics.
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Demonstrating, once again, that there’s data and there’s interpretation. Not the same thing at all. You can’t argue with the data if it’s properly collected. You can always think of alternative interpretations.
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what is interesting to me is that so many jumped straight to it must be those stupid football players not working hard or just too stupid as an explanation of an report they didnt read.
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Why are we talking about graduation percentages? I thought we were going to just start paying them and turn CFB into a pro sport. What happened to that discussion? Pretty sure I saw a thing or two on here about it recently, but I dunno. I mean, if we pay them, who will give a shit if they graduate?
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So this year’s players staying and graduating will be a washout when pared with the recruiting class of 2013 of course Roquan will be counted against us since he left before graduation. I wish they had a way to account for transfers so they did not negatively impact the graduation rate. Hopefully our coaches are on this.
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So when did personal responsibility go out the window? Don’t these people have some responsibility to graduate and not blame the institution, the coaches, the staff, the government, their roommate, you, me? I mean we are all at fault for them not graduating.
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And why do we need to evaluate this by race? The goal many decades ago, and still today, was to not see people by color. It is hard to turn that on and off when stats in so many areas are continually collected by this distinction. You can analyze subjects by many meaningful criteria, the least significant one might be skin color. Let’s try being color blind, and address areas where we can see differences that may be something we can fix. Blacks (as with many other colors, cultures, backgrounds, etc.) have long proven you can succeed wildly, or fail miserably, if you grab the opportunity and work hard. I think the SA category should be addressed as a single group, not divided by color of skin. Comparing that group to other students, is relevant, and perhaps actionable, data.
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If we make the accountability systems color blind, then the rest of the system follows suit? Or no elements of the system are racist, but collecting data with race as a single category out of many creates the illusion they are? I am not following you here.
My issue with articles built upon “percent change” is that they cannot really state whether the change is statistically relevant or not and if so, to what degree. In other words, our media suffers from math illiteracy, something Nate Silver, whatever you think of his politics, does a nice job of skewering relentlessly on Twitter, whether the narrative originates from the right or left.
So, my issues in this area tend to rest on the media reporting than the data recording or data analysis. All data camn be good data, but all data can be misinterpreted as well.
Ou rmedia gets a lot right, so I don’t want to pretend it’s all bad or all biased. But a lot of it, to echo my grandfather, comes from the notion that a little education can be a dangerous thing – people who think they’re fully informed and broadcasting to a larger audience when they’re not.
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