Student … or athlete?

January 15, 2010 by Carin Ford

Posted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Sports

When is a student less of a student? When he (or she) is a Division III athlete, if recent studies are any indication. The results are just coming in from the College Sports Project (CSP), a study that’s spending five years looking at close to 90 (academically) top schools that also have Division III sports.

So far the results are showing a gap between the academic performance of athletes compared to non-athletes.

For example: After completing their freshman year, male athletes who entered college in 2006-07, had academic rankings 9 percentage points lower than students who did not play competitive sports.

For students who had finished two years of college, the gap was marginally smaller.

NCAA administrators are paying attention to the study and considering putting a program into effect a year from now, which would monitor student-athletes’ academic performance.

Is this a step in the right direction? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Tags: Division III, NCAA

One Response to “Student … or athlete?”

Joan H. Says:
January 20th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Definitely needs a look! My daughter received a large academic scholarship to a private Div III school that she chose based on their recruiting claim that she could be a student first and athlete second. She lost the academic scholarship after the first semester when her gpa fell far short of the requirements because she was at mandatory “unofficial” offseason conditioning and practises about 35 hours a week. This semester she will play her sport as a starter, but we will pay full rate for college – can’t wait to see the gpa. Div III is the worst of both worlds financially – no money for athletic ability and no way you can do what it takes to keep an academic scholarship and meet the coaches expectations.