SOCIOLOGY OF SPORT JOURNAL, 1987.4.245-257

The Education of College Student-Athletes

Richard M. Brede and Henry J. Camp Kansas State University

Educational performances of various types of male student-athletes participat- ing in football and basketball at an NCAA Division I school are compared for each enrollment period during one academic year. These comparisons indicate three basic patterns of educational performance, patterns that involve the differential use among these student-athlete types of extra semesters as well as letter grade and credit hour changes in order to meet eligibility re- quirements. Meeting eligibility requirements is a year-round struggle for one fourth of the student-athletes studied. We conclude with some suggestions for additional research on student-athlete education.

The Problem

In 1934 Elwood C. Davis and John A. Cooper set out to review all re- search articles they could find that compared educational attainment of college athletes and nonathletes, hoping thereby to determine as plainly as possible the "effects of athletic participation on scholastic standing. " Their idea was resonant in academic circles across the country. Among other concerns and reservations educators had had about the conduct of intercollegiate athletic affairs at least since the beginning of the century, a belief persisted that college athletes all too fre- quently performed poorly in the classroom compared to other students. The release in 1929 of Howard J. Savage's controversial report, American College Athletics, did little to dislodge this belief from the minds of educators of the 1930s. Davis and Cooper no doubt voiced common concerns over the proper place of organized athletics within the college curriculum when they noted that among their colleagues many believed that "no comer of the athletic design 'squares', at present, within the rectangular frame of the educational institution" (1934:68).

Reporting in considerable detail the results combed from 31 studies com- paring different measures of educational attainment for college athletes and nonath- letes, Davis and Cooper found conflicting results from study to study, a fact they attributed to "differences in the time devoted to each of the studies; the lack of similarity in procedures; the divergence in the type of tools used in securing the

Direct all correspondence to Richard M. Brede, Department of Sociology, Waters Hall, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506.

246 Brede and Camp

data; and, because of the wide variations in the kind and size of the groups studied by different investigators" (1934:76).

What is noteworthy here is that the conclusion Davis and Cooper reached over 50 years ago ("conflicting results" because of "methodological differences" between studies that precluded drawing "final conclusions") applies equally well to athletelnonathlete educational attainment studies published since that time. Con- flicting results are apparent in modern athleticlacademic studies when college grade-point average is taken as a measure of academic achievement. Both Ed- wards (1967) and Pilapil, Stecklein, and Liu (1970) found that athletes had slightly higher grade-point averages than did nonathletes. However, another grouping of GPA studies Wrchner, 1962; Steuch, 1963; Smith, 1965; Stecklein & Dame- ron, 1965; Davis & Berger, 1973; Hanks & Eckland, 1976) reported no differ- ence in grade-point averages. And finally, a third grouping (Harwick, 1961; Larsen, 1973; Harrison, 1976; Messner & Groisser, 1982; Purdy, Eitzen, & Huf- nagel, 1982) found athletes had lower grade-point averages than did nonathletes.

Given what has by now become an 80-year skein of conflicting answers to the athletic participation/academic achievement question, it is not surprising that modem writers, like Davis and Cooper before them, should try to account for these results. Some continue to see faulty methodological procedures of one sort or another as at least partly to blame. Shaw and Cordt (1960:394) saw "conflict- ing and inconclusive results" arising from studies that are "inadequately con- trolled or incomplete in their coverage." Bend (1968: 10) said that "part of the difficulty in interpreting what the studies mean is due to conceptual fuzziness that surrounds the dependent variable-academic achievement." Snyder and Spreit- zer (1983: 133) have pointed to difficulties inherent in making comparisons be- tween college athletes from different schools because of "variations in institutional quality, degree programs, type of sport and other potentially contaminating factors. "

Sustained scholarly research over the course of this century has failed to show unequivocally that college athletes differ in any important way from other college students in terms of their mean grade-point averages. That is, research has failed to determine (Purdy et al., 1982:440) "the degree to which college athletes are disadvantaged educationally by their sports participation." Those who have read and reviewed athletic-academic achievement studies in the scholarly tradition have about as much reason to conclude that college athletes do less well academically than other students as they do to conclude that college athletes do somewhat better academically or, for that matter, to conclude that there appear to be no appreciable differences in academic achievement between athletes and other students.

Over the same span of years, however, investigative sports journalists and former athletes (Needham, 1905; Meggyesy, 1971; Scott, 1971; Shaw, 1972; Axthelm, 1980; Underwood, 1980; Marcin, 1983) have pointed to a range of indecorous facts about the education of college athletes-facts that taken together would seem to indicate at least some college athletes do in fact receive inferior educations. Writers in this tradition have cited practices within colleges and univer- sities dating from the turn of this century that allow athletes to skirt regular ad- missions policies, regular requirements for coursework, and sometimes even real progress toward graduation. One outspoken critic of the higher education of col- lege athletes, John Underwood (1980:40), has gone so far as to say that the old

EDUCATION OF STUDENT-ATHLETES 247

stereotype of the "dumb jock" has become an all too prominent reality on col- lege campuses across the country and, not incidentally, a major source of embar- rassment to these same institutions. Furthermore, Underwood has written that some college athletes are very much exploited, being "kept 'eligible' via an event- less and immaterial habitation of the classroom . . . wind(ing) up down the road with neither of the things they need most: 1) an education and 2) a degree" (1980:41).

Assertions by sports journalists and former athletes about inferior educa- tions, however, are typically supported by anecdotal information or personal recollection; and by its very nature, anecdotal data are of limited generalizability. For this reason they are usually dismissed by the more scholarly inclined (Mel- nick, 1975; Purdy et d., 1982) as "muckrakers."

Still, muckrakers have gathered enough anecdotal evidence from college athletes, coaches, athletic directors, and NCAA enforcement officials to create a worst-case scenario: serious educational problems are likely to arise in those cases in which top notch athletes with academically deficient backgrounds are recruited by colleges and universities. Such students, it is charged, often end up as "eligibility majors" with no real education and no diploma to show for the time they have spent in college. Underwood (1980:41) has noted that "the vener- able institutions of higher learning may not be squeamish about keeping such student-athletes eligible, but they draw the line at sheepskins to young men who have spent most of their time sweating over a pigskin."

Muckrakers have surely pointed to a major problem in the higher educa- tion of college athletes, but they have not shed light on the relative numbers of eligibility majors within studentiathlete populations, nor have they described how or in what particular ways eligibility majors' educational experiences are similar to or different from those student-athletes who do not fit the worst-case scenario. In other words, it cannot be determined from current evidence whether eligibili- ty majors represent only exceptional or isolated instances or whether their num- bers in student-athlete populations are such that a more serious educational problem exists for student-athletes than recognized up to this point.

For different reasons in each case, then, neither scholarly research nor muckraking accounts of student-athlete education seems able to answer satisfac- torily the question of how athletic participation relates to academic performance. To the extent that this question remains important, one step toward resolution might be to develop a clearer picture of student-athlete education. We propose a research focus that describes as fully as possible the distribution of educational performance within a student-athlete population, from the educational perfor- mances of eligibility majors on the one hand to those of academic all-Americans on the other, including also the performances of student-athletes who fall some- where between these extremes.1n examining the full range of educational per- formances of student-athletes in our population, we call attention to student-athlete education as a social process that unfolds semester by semester over the course of one academic year.

Methods

Data for this study were drawn from a sample of student-athletes (N= 167) participating in an NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic program during the

248 Brede and Camp

1982-83 academic year. Our sample included all football (N= 143) and men's basketball players (N=24) certified for athletic competition by the educational institution and who were recognized as members of these teams by their coaches.

After obtaining a roster of student-athletes, we calculated independent as- sessments of each student's athletic and academic ability. Coaches from each sport were asked to rank the athletic ability of each athlete on their team. They were asked to base their judgments on the athlete's overall ability rather than only on his varsity playing time during the 1982-83 season. Based on coaches' subjec- tive rankings, each athlete was placed in one of the following categories: (a) profes- sional prospect, (b) good college player, (c) average college player, (d) weak college player, or (e) recruiting mistake. Due to the small number of athletes rated as either professional prospects or as recruiting mistakes, category A ath- letes were combined with category B athletes, and category E athletes were com- . bind with category D athletes. This created three categories of athletic ability: high, average, and low.

A similar assessment strategy was used to rank each student-athlete's aca- demic ability. The athletic department's academic advisor completed these rank- ings. In our instructions, we stressed that the rankings were to be based on an assessment of overall academic ability rather than only on college grade-point averages. These rankings were based on the following academic indicators: ACT scores, type of high school curriculum, college course selections, and degree progress. Three categories of academic ability were used: high, average, and low. Student-athletes with high academic ability had ACT scores above 20, had com- pleted a college-prep c&culum in high school, enrolled in college courses ap- propriate to their majors, and were viewed as making orderly progress toward a degree. Low academic ability athletes had ACT scores below 15, weak high school backgrounds, enrolled in college courses often unrelated to a major, and were not seen as making steady progress toward a degree. The average academic ability athletes had academic credentials somewhere between these two types.

The intersection of the athletic and academic dimensions created a ninefold classification of student-athlete types, ranging from student-athletes with high abil- itv in each dimension to those with low abilitv in each dimension. For each student- ahete type, five related measures of educ&ional performance were then calcu- lated for each semester, intersession, and summer school during the 1982-83 school year. Using both grade reports issued at the end of each school period and official transcripts covering the academic year, we calculated (a) total credit hours enrolled in each enrollment period (total hours), (b) credit hours passed according to grade reports issued at the end of each enrollment period (original hours) and the resulting GPAs (original GPAs), and (c) credit hours listed as passed on the official transcript (official hours) and the resulting GPAs (official GPAs).

The official transcripts were examined approximately 1 year after the con- clusion of each semester. This allowed us to assign numerical values (mean scores) to student-athletes' educational performance for each of the enrollment periods that collectively constitute the school year. However, this procedure also gener- ated an unwieldy data-presentation problem (9 student-athlete types x 5 perfor- mance scores X 5 semesters). For ease of presentation we have reported GPA scores in Table 1 and credit hour scores in Table 2.

Our approach to the issue of college-athlete education differs from most previous scholarly treatments of the subject in three ways. First, rather than defin-

EDUCATION OF STUDENT-ATHLETES 249

ing individuals in our sample populations as members of the nominal category athletes, we have defined them in terms of their relative rankings (high, average, low) on both academic ability and athletic ability, thereby creating nine concep- tual student-athlete types whose educational performances for one academic year can be compared. Second, again in contrast to most scholarly treatments, we have not relied exclusively on the student-athlete GPAs computed at the end of an aca- demic year. We have focused on a semester-by-semester grade and credit hour acquisition process over the course of an entire academic year (including inter- sessions and summer sessions) for each student-athlete type. Third, we have in- tentionally incorporated into our approach the possibility of "change of grade," a fairly common practice among students in colleges and universities but one that has particular relevance in the study of the educational process of student-athletes. So far as we can determine, previous scholarly research has not examined this possibility.

Our description of the educational performance of student-athletes centers around mean-score data presented in Tables 1 and 2. Table 1 contains grade- point averages (original and official GPAs) for all nine student-athlete types. Table 2 contains mean number of credit hours taken for a letter grade (total hours), credit hours passed at the end of each semester (original hours), and credit hours passed as reflected on offcial transcripts (official hours). Taken together, mean GPA and credit-hour data support the interpretation that the educational perfor- mances of the nine student-athlete types can be grouped into three general pat- terns: passing easily, getting by, and struggling along. Each pattern will be taken up in some detail.

Passing Easily

Considered only with reference to academic ability, 3 1 student-athletes (19 % of the population) were rated high on this dimension (types 1, 4, and 7). Although these types vary a great deal in terms of their rated athletic ability and playing status-from highly rated varsity starters to lowly rated squad members who play very little or not at all during the course of a season-their educational performances conform over the course of an academic year to a consistent pat- tern that we have called passing easily. That is, compared to all other types in this study, these student-athletes tend to take more credit hours each semester (usually 14 or more), pass more credit hours at the end of each semester, pass more credit hours by year's end, and have better GPAs. Their educational perfor- mance substantially exceeds university and conference eligibility standards for grade-point average and NCAA requirements of 24 degree-bearing hours in the academic year, and they accomplish this basically within two regular semesters. None of these student-athletes attended winter or spring intersession, for exam- ple, and although seven enrolled in summer school, five did so for reasons un- related to academic eligibility (they took summer school classes while they were on campus as instructors in a youth sport camp).

Tables 1 and 2 show that student-athletes who are passing easily are not likely to have discrepancies between grade reports issued at the end of the semester and gradeslhours recorded on their official transcripts. Though relatively slight

dwe=) pug epa~a OSZ

Table 2

Mean Credit Hour Scores for Athletic-Academic Types, by Semesters

Fall semester Winter inter- Spring semester Spring inter- Summer Types hours session hours hours session hours school

Athletic Academic ability ability Total Orig Off Total Off Total Orig Off Total Off Total Orig Off

1. High

2. High

3. High

4. Average

5. Average

6. Average

7. Low

8. Low

9. Low

High

Average

Low

High

Average

Low

High

Average

Low

252 Brede and Camp

by comparison, these variations indicate that letter grade and credit hour changes occur to some extent even among the academically most talented. We can illus- trate these changes and their significance to athlete education by considering the educational performance of type 1 student-athletes (i.e., those who are both good athletes and good students).

In the fall semester, these student-athletes took an average of 13.3 credit hours for letter grades and passed an average of 12.6 hours with a 3.206 GPA at the end of the semester. By the end of the academic year, however, these student- athletes had passed on average 13.0 credit hours with a 3.430 GPA, their offi- cially recorded credit hours and GPA for that semester. Similarly, during the spring semester type 1 student-athletes took an average of 15.3 credit hours and passed 14.3 hours by semester's end with a 3.124 GPA. By the end of the aca- demic year, these student-athletes had passed an average of 15.3 credit hours with a 3.222 GPA, again the officially recorded credit total and GPA for that semester.

There is in these mean-score variations an overall increase in both credit hours passed (original to official hours) and GPA (original to official GPA) after the completion of each semester. Several procedures are available to students that allow for change of letter grade as well as credit hour adjustments: they can make up incompletes received in couses; they can raise a low grade by submit- ting extra credit if allowed; they can retake a course they previously failed or did poorly in; and they can convert failing grades to incompletes with an instruc- tor's permission. In the present study, it seems likely that type 1 student-athletes simply make up incompletes they had received during the fall and spring semesters, thereby boosting both their credit hour totals and GPAs.

Getting By

Some 92 student-athletes (55% of the population) were rated average in academic ability (types 2,6, and 8). Again, though there are marked differences between these types in terms of their rated athletic ability, their classroom perfor- mance suggests that we treat getting by as a pattern that is distinct from the other two. We will illustrate the features of this pattern by considering the educational performance of type 2 student-athletes (i.e., those with good athletic ability and average academic ability) over the course of the school year.

As the mean-score data in Table 2 indicate, type 2 student-athletes in the fall semester take nearly the same number of credit hours (13.5) as do student- athletes who are passing easily, but,they pass only about 10.3 hours by semester's end. Moreover, by the end of the academic year when all letter grades and credit hour changes had been made and officially recorded, their hours-passed mean score (10.9) shows only marginal improvement over what they had achieved at the end of the semester when grade reports were first issued.

Original and official GPA data in Table 1 tell a similar story for type 2 student-athletes in the fall semester. Their average GPA (1.930) earned at the completion of that semester increased only slightly (2.133) after all letter grade and credit hour adjustments were made for that semester.

In the spring semester, there is some improvement in the educational per- formances of type 2 student-athletes (at least insofar as credit hours passed is concerned) over what they achieved in the fall. They took an average of 13.0

EDUCATION OF STUDENT-ATHLETES 253

credit hours for a letter grade in the second semester, passed an average of 11 -5 by the time semester grade reports were issued, and by making up incompletes they passed 12.5 hours for that semester. Type 2 student-athletes officially passed virtually all credit hours they had enrolled in, earning an average GPA of 2.103 at semester's end and a GPA of 2.137 after all grade and hour changes were made.

With mean GPAs slightly above 2.00, type 2 student-athletes meet both university and athletic conference minimum GPA requirements. Insofar as an eligi- bility or certification problem can be said to exist for them, it consists of meeting in two regular semesters the NCAA 24 degree-bearing-hour requirement. As not- ed, type 2 student-athletes accumulate a credit-hour deficit of nearly 3 credit hours in the fall semester (13.5 total hours taken and 10.9 official hours passed), and they generally do not overcome this deficit with their credit hour performance in the spring semester (13.0 total hours taken and 12.5 official hours passed). As a result, many enroll for classes in extra semesters offered by the university through intersessions and summer school. One third of type 2 student-athletes enroll for intersession classes and about one fourth enroll in summer school, in this case making up credit hour deficiencies rather than GPA deficiencies.

Struggling Along

In all, 44 student-athletes (26% of the population) were rated low on aca- demic ability (types 3,6, and 9). Included in this group is the full range of ath- letic types in this study, from highly recruited starting varsity players to walk- ons whose only playing time comes during practice and intra-squad scrimmages. The educational performance of the low academically rated student-athletes, con- sidered as a whole, conforms to a pattern over the course of a school year that we have called struggling along. To illustrate, we will examine the educational performance of type 3 student-athletes (i.e., those rated high in athletic ability and low in academic ability).

In the fall semester, type 3 student-athletes took an average of 13.6 credit hours for letter grades, an average that compares to credit hour figures for all other student-athlete types in that semester. When semester grade reports were issued for the fall semester, however, type 3 student-athletes had passed only 5.1 credit hours with a GPA of 1.096. In other words, they had passed less than half the credit hours in which they were enrolled with a D average.

These results indicate there are academic problems for type 3 student- athletes at semester's end in meeting minimum university, conference, or NCAA eligibility requirements. It should be noted, however, that these academic defi- ciencies are partially offset through letter grade and credit hour adjustments after the completion of the semester; thus, for the fall semester type 3 student-athletes officially passed an average of 7.1 credit hours with a 1.791 GPA. However, even these improved official credit hour and GPA scores foreshadow recurrent academic problems that these student-athletes have throughout the academic year.

One measure of the struggle that type 3 student-athletes face in meeting eligibility requirements can be seen in their extensive use, relative to other student- athletes, of winter intersession courses following their marginal educational per- formance during the fall. Our data show that 78 % of type 3 student-athletes en- rolled in winter intersession courses to offset both the credit hour and GPA deficits accumulated in the fail semester.

254 Brede and Camp

In the spring, type 3 student-athletes performed better academically than they did in the fall. They again enrolled in an average of 13.6 credit hours and passed an average of 10.1 hours with a 1.778 GPA. With various letter grade and credit hour changes made after the completion of the semester, these figures were increased to 10.9 official hours passed with a 2.104 official GPA. To some extent, type 3 student-athletes have eligibility problems in maintaining GPAs that meet university and conference standards; however, a more pressing problem exists in terms of meeting the NCAA requirements of 24 credit hours: they fell far short of meeting this requirement in two regular semesters.

For both GPA and credit-hour reasons, type 3 student-athletes, relatively speaking, made more use of extra semesters in order to maintain eligibility. In addition to their heavy enrollment in winter intersession, about one third enroll for an average of 2.8 hours in the spring intersession, and about one third enroll for an average of 3.9 hours in summer school. Through grade and credit hours changes in the fall and spring semesters, and enrollments in extra semesters, type 3 student-athletes earned a 1.966 GPA by the end of the academic year, accumulat- ing along the way just enough credit hours to satisfy minimum eligibility re- quirements.

Conclusions

The educational performance of student-athletes over an academic year does not constitute a relatively undifferentiated whole, a somewhat homogene- ous process that all student-athletes experience. No single arithmetic score (viz., a summary GPA for the academic year) seems capable of capturing this diversity and reflecting it without substantial distortion. For example, the official 1982-83 GPA for our population of student-athletes is 2.346, a figure that falls within the range of comparable summary statistics reported over the years in other GPA studies. Clearly, this statistic vastly oversimplifies the social processes inside and outside the classroom that ultimately produce such a summary score. Some student- athletes (those passing easily) complete coursework requirements each semester and earn good grades. Some student-athletes (those struggling along) do not com- plete requirements for all the courses they take each semester, earn low grades for the work they do complete, carry a backlog of incompletes and failing grades throughout the year, enroll in extra semesters to meet minimum credit hour and GPA eligibility requirements, and negotiate with faculty over grade and credit hour adjustments. For some student-athletes, eligibility is not a problem; for others it appears to be a major problem.

Just as summary statistics can gloss over the issue, popular images evoked in the media as typifications of student-athletes and their education can have the same effect. One current image of the student-athlete's educational experience is majoring in eligibility (Underwood, 1980). Public attention is directed to those highly skilled and heavily recruited scholarship athletes whose outstanding feats on the field contrast sharply with their performance in the classroom. Although majoring in eligibility seems to occur among the most talented athletes (about one third experience difficulty in meeting eligibility requirements), it also occurs among those with average athletic ability and can even occur among walk-ons, who, in a phrase, never play a down of football or a minute of basketball. That is, majoring in eligibility as a pattern of educational performance is more widespread than current thinking would suggest. However, to imply that it is the

EDUCATION OF STUDENT-ATHLETES

dominant educational pattern for student-athletes is carrying things too far. A more defensible typification of student-athlete educational performance is that they are average. More than half of the student-athletes in our population get C averages, experience some difficulty in each enrollment period in completing 12 or more credit hours toward the NCAA's 12124 rule in two regular semesters, make up virtually all incompletes they accumulate, and in some instances take classes in extra semesters offered by the university in order to meet credit hour requirements.

By drawing attention to the range of educational performances of student- athletes over an academic year, we have tried to steer a middle course between summary GPA studies on the one hand and overarching journalistic typifications on the other. To provide a tentative answer to the research question put by Raney , Knapp, and Small (1983:53) of "how student-athletes survive in an academic environment," we suggest there is not one but several basic patterns of educa- tional performance through which academic survival is achieved.

An important defining feature of each pattern is the letter gradelcredit hour acquisition process. We have used different measures from those common- ly used in GPA studies to reflect this process more accurately as it unfolds dur- ing the academic year. Two of the measures we used (original and official GPA) resemble measures of educational performance proposed by Figler (1984) in his conceptualization of real and official GPA; two of our measures (original hours and official hours passed) also resemble what Figler (1984:385) has called the "Proportion of 'No Progress Units' "-that proportion of units attempted result- ing in grades (F, incomplete, no credit, withdraw, etc.) that indicate a lack of progress in courses. We did not expressly compute this proportion because of our more general concern with the gradelcredit hour acquisition process. We ex- pect that the proportion of no-progress units would vary within a population of student-athletes along the lines we have suggested, with no-progress units hav- ing little relevance for student-athletes passing easily but being especially promi- nent among those struggling along.

In this study we have begun to identify what Purdy et al. (1981:446) have called the "process dynamics" of student-athlete education. Much more remains to be done. Further research is needed to determine whether the patterns report- ed here and the relative proportions of student-athletes caught up in each pattern are typical of student-athletes at other colleges and universities. There is at present no practical way of determining this.

We have identified gradelcredit hour changes as a practice of variable im- portance to student-athletes in maintaining eligibility. Future research might fo- cus on gradelhour changes and types of coursework taken by student-athletes. Raney et al. (1983) and Figler (1984) have pointed to specific coursework con- centrations as one practice used by student-athletes to ensure their eligibility. Although we did not focus on types of courses taken, a casual inspection of tran- scripts leads us to believe that some student-athletes, those who struggle along, consistently search out and enroll in eligibility courses. These courses are not concentrated in one college or department, however, but are distributed through- out the university's various course offerings. Until research on student-athlete educational processes is accomplished at several other universities at various levels of athletic competition, we are not likely to know the full extent of the problem of student-athlete education.

256 Brede and Camp

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