The Education of Dasmine Cathey
June 4, 2012 1:14 PM Subscribe
A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education tells the story of The Education of Dasmine Cathey, a 23-year-old football player for the University of Memphis. Writer Brad Wolverton met Cathey, who taught himself to read his second year of college, while doing research on student-athletes with severe reading, writing, and learning problems.
Well, at some point someone should at least teach them some basic life skills like reading.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:37 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:37 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
Wow, that's a bleak story.
Delmoi:
Total NFL players: 1,696
Number of FBS (Division 1 schools): 120
Number of available scholarships per school: 85
Total scholarships: 10,200
Most of these kids aren't playing pro ball. They're getting a scholarship to a school and graduating barely literate.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:38 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
Delmoi:
Total NFL players: 1,696
Number of FBS (Division 1 schools): 120
Number of available scholarships per school: 85
Total scholarships: 10,200
Most of these kids aren't playing pro ball. They're getting a scholarship to a school and graduating barely literate.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:38 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
College football is, in essence, the farm league for the NFL. 17-year-old baseball players have the choice between entering the farm system or going to college - football players don't have the same options. A vanishingly low number of high school graduating football players are ready for the NFL, athletically.
posted by muddgirl at 1:44 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by muddgirl at 1:44 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
Adult illiteracy is one of those things that always, ALWAYS gets me. It's a goddamn tragedy.
posted by dismas at 1:51 PM on June 4, 2012 [5 favorites]
posted by dismas at 1:51 PM on June 4, 2012 [5 favorites]
Re: "...or something rather than "go to college" first?"
Have you seen what sort of big business college football is? You get indentured labor and turn that into huge dollars? What sort of university would give up that gravy train?
posted by straw at 1:53 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
Have you seen what sort of big business college football is? You get indentured labor and turn that into huge dollars? What sort of university would give up that gravy train?
posted by straw at 1:53 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
Why not just let these kids play in the NFL, or arena football or something rather then "go to college" first?
That's a good question, though perhaps a bit off-topic from the posted article. But, I'll give a go at answering. There are probably two big reasons why "these kids" aren't allowed to play in the NFL. One reason is that the bodies of 17/18 year old kids are simply not ready for the NFL. So presumably the age restriction has at least something to do with limiting the NFL's exposure to lawsuits in the case of a minor getting his spine snapped in half. Secondly, the NFL is a brand like any other profit-making enterprise and it wants to ensure that it produces a quality product. Drafting kids out of high-school would pollute the brand, as the younger the picks gets, the more risky they become. Drafting a 20-year old who has proven himself in college is much better for teams and the league than drafting a *potentially* amazing 17-year old phenom who may or may not pan out. See: the NBA, where age limit restrictions may be raised in the next year or two as a way to improve the overall quality of draft picks.
Back to the article: damn. Hats off to him for his perseverance and attitude.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:54 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
That's a good question, though perhaps a bit off-topic from the posted article. But, I'll give a go at answering. There are probably two big reasons why "these kids" aren't allowed to play in the NFL. One reason is that the bodies of 17/18 year old kids are simply not ready for the NFL. So presumably the age restriction has at least something to do with limiting the NFL's exposure to lawsuits in the case of a minor getting his spine snapped in half. Secondly, the NFL is a brand like any other profit-making enterprise and it wants to ensure that it produces a quality product. Drafting kids out of high-school would pollute the brand, as the younger the picks gets, the more risky they become. Drafting a 20-year old who has proven himself in college is much better for teams and the league than drafting a *potentially* amazing 17-year old phenom who may or may not pan out. See: the NBA, where age limit restrictions may be raised in the next year or two as a way to improve the overall quality of draft picks.
Back to the article: damn. Hats off to him for his perseverance and attitude.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 1:54 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
I might have missed a FPP on this topic, but the Atlantic did a bit recently on the NCAA that was pretty shameful, even if a lot of it was something of an open secret among college sports fans. As a relative layman (though a graduate of UGA, firmly ensconced in the SEC and home to the Jan Kemp imbroligio of the early 80s), I was pretty shocked.
posted by jquinby at 1:56 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
posted by jquinby at 1:56 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
from the end of the article: "Maybe he'll fix up cars with his uncle, or help out in his dad's soul-food restaurant. But if he had his choice, he'd really love to work with kids."
I hope that he becomes a teacher -- he'll need help getting his skills up, but I think he would be a better teacher for struggling kids than someone who never has struggled at school. I don't remember learning to read because it was always easy for me -- and it's really hard for me to help a kid who doesn't already like to read. But he knows where they are coming from, and how important reading is, even if it isn't immediately fun.
posted by jb at 2:13 PM on June 4, 2012 [12 favorites]
I hope that he becomes a teacher -- he'll need help getting his skills up, but I think he would be a better teacher for struggling kids than someone who never has struggled at school. I don't remember learning to read because it was always easy for me -- and it's really hard for me to help a kid who doesn't already like to read. But he knows where they are coming from, and how important reading is, even if it isn't immediately fun.
posted by jb at 2:13 PM on June 4, 2012 [12 favorites]
Read the comments in the article, they are mostly and spot on articulate.
Many many many issues in this (the largest obviously being the vast unfair burdens that structural poverty and racism place on people....and the huge hills that people who experience these burdens have to overcome).....
..... but beyond that, one of the ones that depresses me most immediately is the Naked Credentialism, the obsession that US culture has with being a "college graduate" at any cost .
Squeeze people through a number of courses picked from a list (most of which could be described, most charitably, as 'lacking rigor') and boom! A Graduate! Because That's What Counts (TM) : not skills, not growth, not abilities, not results, most definitely not education (vis. educare "to draw out"), just a certificate saying Society Can Find A Use For Me Now.
It makes people jump through hoops that they are not equipped to jump through , it devalues the whole idea of a college degree as a qualification, it uses societal resources inefficiently, and it makes the system just more easy to view as a money making plant where the plastic that goes in is the High School Graduate and the widget that comes out is the College Graduate (also available in Sports Flavor (TM)). This kind of system kills the soul of education and educators.
BTW, I'm a college professor.
posted by lalochezia at 2:16 PM on June 4, 2012 [28 favorites]
Many many many issues in this (the largest obviously being the vast unfair burdens that structural poverty and racism place on people....and the huge hills that people who experience these burdens have to overcome).....
..... but beyond that, one of the ones that depresses me most immediately is the Naked Credentialism, the obsession that US culture has with being a "college graduate" at any cost .
Squeeze people through a number of courses picked from a list (most of which could be described, most charitably, as 'lacking rigor') and boom! A Graduate! Because That's What Counts (TM) : not skills, not growth, not abilities, not results, most definitely not education (vis. educare "to draw out"), just a certificate saying Society Can Find A Use For Me Now.
It makes people jump through hoops that they are not equipped to jump through , it devalues the whole idea of a college degree as a qualification, it uses societal resources inefficiently, and it makes the system just more easy to view as a money making plant where the plastic that goes in is the High School Graduate and the widget that comes out is the College Graduate (also available in Sports Flavor (TM)). This kind of system kills the soul of education and educators.
BTW, I'm a college professor.
posted by lalochezia at 2:16 PM on June 4, 2012 [28 favorites]
First line should read : "mostly spot-on and articulate"
posted by lalochezia at 2:17 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by lalochezia at 2:17 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
In the comments,from Donna Halper :
I find some of the comments puzzling, especially the gratuitous jabs at the public schools. The sad truth is that certain political battles are playing out in classrooms across the country. In these battles, public school teachers make an easy scapegoat, but there's a bigger issue here. I've been both a public school teacher and a university professor, and I've taught kids like Dasmine. With few exceptions, they came from severely impoverished homes with little parental support. (And it should be noted that this applied to poor white kids as well as poor kids of color-- the lack of actual parenting, the lack of a safe place to study, the lack of encouragement, and even the lack of food, impacts the ability of these kids to learn.) And sadly, most of the boys received the message that sports would be their salvation. They were not encouraged to do anything else-- just be good at sports. And there were many adults who were willing to enable that erroneous belief. (And yes, I too was told on a couple of occasions to pass a "student"-athlete. I refused, and that was not a popular decision.)
But I wasn't trying to be a killjoy-- I was just trying to be ethical. And that is my real point here. Colleges should be ashamed for caring more about sports than about ethics: it is UNETHICAL (and yes, all caps are needed here) to admit a kid who cannot read, and give him easy courses, and pass him when he cannot write. I don't blame the kid for grabbing what he sees as his only lifeline: as I said, we live in a culture where poor kids are led to believe that athletics are their only hope. Rather, I blame an entire web of influences, a popular culture that glorifies and excuses what high profile athletes do; college donors and alums who are more interesting in having a winning team than in providing the players with a real education; administrators who feel pressured to protect even the players who can't read; and politicians who are more concerned with political posturing than with fixing the real problems that cause poor children to graduate with serious gaps in their learning. Until we take an honest look at NCAA athletic requirements and begin telling the truth about our priorities (at many schools, sports are just a showcase-- the kids come for a year or two, showcase themselves to the pro scouts, and then leave, as illiterate as they were before), nothing will change and more Dasmines will be short-changed.
posted by lalochezia at 2:22 PM on June 4, 2012 [24 favorites]
I find some of the comments puzzling, especially the gratuitous jabs at the public schools. The sad truth is that certain political battles are playing out in classrooms across the country. In these battles, public school teachers make an easy scapegoat, but there's a bigger issue here. I've been both a public school teacher and a university professor, and I've taught kids like Dasmine. With few exceptions, they came from severely impoverished homes with little parental support. (And it should be noted that this applied to poor white kids as well as poor kids of color-- the lack of actual parenting, the lack of a safe place to study, the lack of encouragement, and even the lack of food, impacts the ability of these kids to learn.) And sadly, most of the boys received the message that sports would be their salvation. They were not encouraged to do anything else-- just be good at sports. And there were many adults who were willing to enable that erroneous belief. (And yes, I too was told on a couple of occasions to pass a "student"-athlete. I refused, and that was not a popular decision.)
But I wasn't trying to be a killjoy-- I was just trying to be ethical. And that is my real point here. Colleges should be ashamed for caring more about sports than about ethics: it is UNETHICAL (and yes, all caps are needed here) to admit a kid who cannot read, and give him easy courses, and pass him when he cannot write. I don't blame the kid for grabbing what he sees as his only lifeline: as I said, we live in a culture where poor kids are led to believe that athletics are their only hope. Rather, I blame an entire web of influences, a popular culture that glorifies and excuses what high profile athletes do; college donors and alums who are more interesting in having a winning team than in providing the players with a real education; administrators who feel pressured to protect even the players who can't read; and politicians who are more concerned with political posturing than with fixing the real problems that cause poor children to graduate with serious gaps in their learning. Until we take an honest look at NCAA athletic requirements and begin telling the truth about our priorities (at many schools, sports are just a showcase-- the kids come for a year or two, showcase themselves to the pro scouts, and then leave, as illiterate as they were before), nothing will change and more Dasmines will be short-changed.
posted by lalochezia at 2:22 PM on June 4, 2012 [24 favorites]
lalochezia, I wish I could favorite that comment 100 times more. I was lucky--when I was teaching public high school (urban, high poverty), our principal actually enforced the GPA requirements for players. If you could back up your grading (i.e. you used metrics and rubrics and didn't do it "holistically"), teacher-given grades stood. The attendance requirement for student athletes probably kept more kids in school than any other policy I can think of, including home visits for the chronically truant.
posted by smirkette at 2:30 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by smirkette at 2:30 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
I agree, lalochezia (although I will note that many other countries/cultures also put a very heavy focus on The Degree over The Education - I don't think that it's a phenomenon unique to the US at all).
But I also think that, when it comes to college sports, the bottom line is a bit different - really, it's a function of the fact that the NFL primarily draws their talent from the pool of 'student athletes'. If you want to play in the NFL, you have to go to college - not to 'get the degree', but to get in front of talent scouts.
Because of embarrasing profiles like this one, the NCAA has done practically all it can to ensure that student-athletes aren't simply coasting through, but you can't cure the disease by treating the symptoms.
posted by muddgirl at 2:30 PM on June 4, 2012
But I also think that, when it comes to college sports, the bottom line is a bit different - really, it's a function of the fact that the NFL primarily draws their talent from the pool of 'student athletes'. If you want to play in the NFL, you have to go to college - not to 'get the degree', but to get in front of talent scouts.
Because of embarrasing profiles like this one, the NCAA has done practically all it can to ensure that student-athletes aren't simply coasting through, but you can't cure the disease by treating the symptoms.
posted by muddgirl at 2:30 PM on June 4, 2012
straw: "Have you seen what sort of big business college football is? You get indentured labor and turn that into huge dollars? What sort of university would give up that gravy train?"
Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates is probably right about bone structure...I dunno, I can't speak to that, but I'm from Texas, where the national sport is football; and there is a metric fuckton of money in it for everyone except the players.
Example; I live in a tiny little school district. My son, who is an elementary school student attends a school in a 50 year old building. At the beginning of the school year, we discovered that more than half of the library stack at the school is 30+ years old...and not the classics we expect, but science books. He brought home one book that talked about the space race as future tech; that's how old it was.
But the high school? It has a 35 MILLION dollar football stadium. People worship at the altar of football, fuck knowledge...FOOOOOOOOBAAAAAALLLL! We couldn't get a school bond passed to pay for infrastructure, but we could sure as hell get one passed for football buses and upgrades to the football program. Cause those boys need air conditioned lockers, and why would grade school students need books or a non-leaking roof? That's crazy talk...books over football.
Colleges make billions of dollars with football programs. Billions. With a B. Athletes don't make a damn thing, they get passed through classes without showing up, and they "graduate", most of them into lives of pathetic illiterate obscurity. But that 1% that makes it to the pro-games; they become millionaires...and it's the last Horatio Alger story left.
Football, as it is played, should be stopped. Football, as it is played in college, should be taken off the airwaves, and have it's profit center cut out at the knees. Football in high school should be played without pads and helmets, so the injury levels are reduced to those like rugby and soccer; rather than lifelong consequences of hitting your head a zillion times at 40mph. And football at elementary school? That shit should just be banned.
Needless to say; mine is not a popular opinion here in the Great State of Pigskin.
posted by dejah420 at 2:32 PM on June 4, 2012 [48 favorites]
Yeah, that's exactly it. I mean, (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates is probably right about bone structure...I dunno, I can't speak to that, but I'm from Texas, where the national sport is football; and there is a metric fuckton of money in it for everyone except the players.
Example; I live in a tiny little school district. My son, who is an elementary school student attends a school in a 50 year old building. At the beginning of the school year, we discovered that more than half of the library stack at the school is 30+ years old...and not the classics we expect, but science books. He brought home one book that talked about the space race as future tech; that's how old it was.
But the high school? It has a 35 MILLION dollar football stadium. People worship at the altar of football, fuck knowledge...FOOOOOOOOBAAAAAALLLL! We couldn't get a school bond passed to pay for infrastructure, but we could sure as hell get one passed for football buses and upgrades to the football program. Cause those boys need air conditioned lockers, and why would grade school students need books or a non-leaking roof? That's crazy talk...books over football.
Colleges make billions of dollars with football programs. Billions. With a B. Athletes don't make a damn thing, they get passed through classes without showing up, and they "graduate", most of them into lives of pathetic illiterate obscurity. But that 1% that makes it to the pro-games; they become millionaires...and it's the last Horatio Alger story left.
Football, as it is played, should be stopped. Football, as it is played in college, should be taken off the airwaves, and have it's profit center cut out at the knees. Football in high school should be played without pads and helmets, so the injury levels are reduced to those like rugby and soccer; rather than lifelong consequences of hitting your head a zillion times at 40mph. And football at elementary school? That shit should just be banned.
Needless to say; mine is not a popular opinion here in the Great State of Pigskin.
posted by dejah420 at 2:32 PM on June 4, 2012 [48 favorites]
such a sad story. Apart from what everyone else has said, it was apparent that for many people at the college, the football guys are the only contact they have with structural poverty. So they have no idea how to help, even when they really, really want to
posted by mumimor at 3:00 PM on June 4, 2012
posted by mumimor at 3:00 PM on June 4, 2012
Maybe cancel college football too. In no other country’s university system, after all, does sports play anything like the central role it does in American academic life. Men do not go to Oxford to play cricket; the Sorbonne does not field a nationally celebrated soccer team. Even in the most sports-mad countries, sports is sports and education is education. That’s a better system.
College sports distorts academic life in many ways, beginning with admissions.
posted by dhens at 3:09 PM on June 4, 2012 [3 favorites]
College sports distorts academic life in many ways, beginning with admissions.
posted by dhens at 3:09 PM on June 4, 2012 [3 favorites]
UGA attorney Hale Almand, in his opening remarks to the jury, set an unfortunate tone: “We may not make a university student out of him, but if we can teach him to read and write, maybe he can work at the post office rather than as a garbage man when he gets through with his athletic career.”
Secretly taped at a faculty meeting, then-remedial studies boss Leroy Ervin told his staff: “I know for a fact that these kids would not be here if it were not for their utility to the institution… . They are used as a kind of raw material in the production of some goods to be sold as whatever product, and they get nothing in return.”
posted by dhens at 3:23 PM on June 4, 2012 [5 favorites]
Secretly taped at a faculty meeting, then-remedial studies boss Leroy Ervin told his staff: “I know for a fact that these kids would not be here if it were not for their utility to the institution… . They are used as a kind of raw material in the production of some goods to be sold as whatever product, and they get nothing in return.”
posted by dhens at 3:23 PM on June 4, 2012 [5 favorites]
deja420, I've said nearly the same thing. Get rid of college sports, make attending a university about *learning* again, rather than just as a prerequisite to being on the team for some.
Sure, have some school spirit, be a fan of your school's team(s), but stop putting athletics over education, people.
posted by mrbill at 3:34 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
Sure, have some school spirit, be a fan of your school's team(s), but stop putting athletics over education, people.
posted by mrbill at 3:34 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
One of the sad things is that tier-1 universities have become so codependent on their football/basketball programs. What would a top US university look like without that money-generating (albeit and consuming consuming) source? My experience is that the graduate programs would certainly be much smaller - my local public school recently added a Div. 1 football program because they saw it as the only way to generate enough revenue to support a full Ph.D. program. Ph.D. programs certainly don't require a Div 1 program, but having a diversity of Ph.D. options seems to. But if we are putting too much emphasis on The Degree, maybe having more exclusive and more limited departments is a good thing?
posted by muddgirl at 3:41 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by muddgirl at 3:41 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
But anyway, some of this is really tangential to Cathey's story. If Cathey grew up in a world without Div 1 football as it's played to day, I doubt his life would be better. He'd still be making beer deliveries or maybe working at his dad's restaurant. It's doubtful he would have had the impetus to teach himself to read. But an illiterate high school graduate isn't really exceptional enough to warrant a journalistic profile.
posted by muddgirl at 3:53 PM on June 4, 2012
posted by muddgirl at 3:53 PM on June 4, 2012
"He's like Houdini—he's here, and then he's not," Ms. Connell says. "I just wish Dasmine cared more. You can't make someone care."
This seems so much like missing the point. Sure, if he put his classes above all else, he would presumably do better, but the guy's couch surfing to help house and feed his family, for god's sake and you can't fault him too much for that. And, yeah, some people can do that and pull off a decent college record, but I don't think he deserves such an indictment for not being one of them.
posted by hoyland at 4:13 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
This seems so much like missing the point. Sure, if he put his classes above all else, he would presumably do better, but the guy's couch surfing to help house and feed his family, for god's sake and you can't fault him too much for that. And, yeah, some people can do that and pull off a decent college record, but I don't think he deserves such an indictment for not being one of them.
posted by hoyland at 4:13 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
What would a top US university look like without that money-generating (albeit and consuming consuming) source?
Harvard? Brown? Cal Tech? University of Chicago? NYU?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:21 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
Harvard? Brown? Cal Tech? University of Chicago? NYU?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:21 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
And on the other hand, Devry? Univ of Phoenix? Community colleges? I don't think there's a huge correlation.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:23 PM on June 4, 2012
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 5:23 PM on June 4, 2012
I don't think that sports is really the problem. The real problem is a lack of rigor. Cathey made it through his first semester, semi-literate, with about a C average, according to the article. Whatever the failings of college sports, they are more a symptom than a cause of the problems.
The problems are, roughly, a lack of rigor and a lack of a genuine intellectual/academic orientation.
First, there are just too many colleges that are too easy, and just too many easy majors and easy courses even at respectable schools. Very, very little is expected of students in very many courses. And, to hearken back to the discussion of the zero grade, grade inflation is a huge problem. Students in many courses know that they'll get decent grades even for crap work. When they receive low grades for bad work, many are astonished. I don't blame them so much as I blame their professors, who are responsible for developing these expectations. My school is a pretty good one, but many students have said some version of the following to me: I expected college to be hard, but it isn't.
Second, whereas you'd think the university would be the last bastion of the life of the mind in our resolutely and passionately anti-intellectual and market-o-centric culture....no. There is no last bastion. It's gone. Most university students have a vocational orientation, and college does little to change that. Students want job training. And vocational majors--with a few exceptions like (if you count it) engineering and pre-med--tend to be much less rigorous and intellectually valuable. My school has a major in *restaurant and hotel management*. Not to mention *leisure studies,* for the love of God. We used to have a department called *fashion merchandising.* Many other majors are, inside the academy, known to be jokes though they are thought to be respectable outside it....but I don't want to open that can of worms.
Yes, college sports are seriously messed up. And an emphasis on them does contribute to fostering a bad atmosphere on many campuses. But they're small potatoes, really. A hundred or so more students who aren't really on campus to learn is a drop in the bucket.
I'm a college prof, incidentally. And that's my carefully considered $0.02.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 5:26 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
The problems are, roughly, a lack of rigor and a lack of a genuine intellectual/academic orientation.
First, there are just too many colleges that are too easy, and just too many easy majors and easy courses even at respectable schools. Very, very little is expected of students in very many courses. And, to hearken back to the discussion of the zero grade, grade inflation is a huge problem. Students in many courses know that they'll get decent grades even for crap work. When they receive low grades for bad work, many are astonished. I don't blame them so much as I blame their professors, who are responsible for developing these expectations. My school is a pretty good one, but many students have said some version of the following to me: I expected college to be hard, but it isn't.
Second, whereas you'd think the university would be the last bastion of the life of the mind in our resolutely and passionately anti-intellectual and market-o-centric culture....no. There is no last bastion. It's gone. Most university students have a vocational orientation, and college does little to change that. Students want job training. And vocational majors--with a few exceptions like (if you count it) engineering and pre-med--tend to be much less rigorous and intellectually valuable. My school has a major in *restaurant and hotel management*. Not to mention *leisure studies,* for the love of God. We used to have a department called *fashion merchandising.* Many other majors are, inside the academy, known to be jokes though they are thought to be respectable outside it....but I don't want to open that can of worms.
Yes, college sports are seriously messed up. And an emphasis on them does contribute to fostering a bad atmosphere on many campuses. But they're small potatoes, really. A hundred or so more students who aren't really on campus to learn is a drop in the bucket.
I'm a college prof, incidentally. And that's my carefully considered $0.02.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 5:26 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
Harvard? Brown? Cal Tech? University of Chicago? NYU?
Harvard and Brown have Division I football teams. I dare say Harvard makes some money off theirs. It seems they care about the Harvard-Yale game.
U of C has a football team, but it's definitely not Division I. (I only know this because the one guy in my high school class who went to U of C played for them. Bizarrely, he had avoided the torment the rest of us suffered by pretending to be a moron from 6th grade on, which would seemingly make him as far from the U of C stereotype as possible.)
posted by hoyland at 5:34 PM on June 4, 2012
Harvard and Brown have Division I football teams. I dare say Harvard makes some money off theirs. It seems they care about the Harvard-Yale game.
U of C has a football team, but it's definitely not Division I. (I only know this because the one guy in my high school class who went to U of C played for them. Bizarrely, he had avoided the torment the rest of us suffered by pretending to be a moron from 6th grade on, which would seemingly make him as far from the U of C stereotype as possible.)
posted by hoyland at 5:34 PM on June 4, 2012
I'm a college prof, incidentally. And that's my carefully considered $0.02.
And your post stinks. The NCAA and professional American sports (and other countries) encourage this kind of behavior by colleges and universities. Dasmine Cathey is one of many thousands of people who have gone on to higher education over the last 60 years who for one reason or another is not academically prepared but has been trained to be a star athlete - and that is what colleges care about.
Sports, like law schools, are money trees for higher education. A university medical center can be thought of in the same way. Sports mix that element of suspense with achievement and then bottle up alumni anxiety and outside marketing dollars into an explosive combination that tends to grow student bases more than an outstanding English department. That is only because most top-ranking English departments don't get involved with network television. You see, the admission of Dasmine Cathey can be blamed on the academy. There is no way of denying that someone had to approve of his admission. There are certainly people who can say they did not know this person, but there are many people responsible for his place.
posted by parmanparman at 5:37 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
And your post stinks. The NCAA and professional American sports (and other countries) encourage this kind of behavior by colleges and universities. Dasmine Cathey is one of many thousands of people who have gone on to higher education over the last 60 years who for one reason or another is not academically prepared but has been trained to be a star athlete - and that is what colleges care about.
Sports, like law schools, are money trees for higher education. A university medical center can be thought of in the same way. Sports mix that element of suspense with achievement and then bottle up alumni anxiety and outside marketing dollars into an explosive combination that tends to grow student bases more than an outstanding English department. That is only because most top-ranking English departments don't get involved with network television. You see, the admission of Dasmine Cathey can be blamed on the academy. There is no way of denying that someone had to approve of his admission. There are certainly people who can say they did not know this person, but there are many people responsible for his place.
posted by parmanparman at 5:37 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
Do colleges really make considerable money from sports teams? Money that doesn't go into the program and it's facilities more often than not? I'm interested to see some evidence of that beyond speculation.
posted by PJLandis at 5:40 PM on June 4, 2012
posted by PJLandis at 5:40 PM on June 4, 2012
Do colleges really make considerable money from sports teams? Money that doesn't go into the program and it's facilities more often than not? I'm interested to see some evidence of that beyond speculation.
I dug some numbers up about this in a previous post. I'll go look for that comment. Basically, football pulls in a huge amount of money and pays for the other athletic teams. At a lot of schools, men's basketball will turn a profit as well. Women's basketball can go either way. In general, everything else loses money. However, sports are a way to keep alumni involved in the university and, if you're lucky, you can then get them to give you large sums of money for something other than football.
posted by hoyland at 5:53 PM on June 4, 2012
I dug some numbers up about this in a previous post. I'll go look for that comment. Basically, football pulls in a huge amount of money and pays for the other athletic teams. At a lot of schools, men's basketball will turn a profit as well. Women's basketball can go either way. In general, everything else loses money. However, sports are a way to keep alumni involved in the university and, if you're lucky, you can then get them to give you large sums of money for something other than football.
posted by hoyland at 5:53 PM on June 4, 2012
Cal Tech doesn't have a Div 1 sports program, but they also don't have a diverse Ph.D. program. Tier 1 institutions without an equivalent sports program tend to be specialized. like Cal Tech or USCSF (which is graduate-only).
Do colleges really make considerable money from sports teams?
On the whole, collegiate athletic programs don't make more money than they spend, but that's not the whole story. Football dollars don't go directly to academic programs, but higher-profile sports teams == higher profile schools == higher endowments or more state appropriations.
posted by muddgirl at 5:57 PM on June 4, 2012
Do colleges really make considerable money from sports teams?
On the whole, collegiate athletic programs don't make more money than they spend, but that's not the whole story. Football dollars don't go directly to academic programs, but higher-profile sports teams == higher profile schools == higher endowments or more state appropriations.
posted by muddgirl at 5:57 PM on June 4, 2012
I've found it. An article and the comment (in case you want a tiny bit more detail, since the example I was familiar with was lacking some relevant information).
As I was making dinner, I was thinking about the fact that college athletic recruitment was probably what started driving a wedge between me and my best friend in high school. He was a mediocre member of a very good high school swim team. This was enough for him to be recruited by some Division III colleges. Which is pretty much meaningless, I think. There are no scholarships and I don't know if the coaches can exert any admission influence. But they arrange campus visits and try hard to show the recruits a good time. I slowly realised this was what was driving his decision-making, not academic opportunity. He got in to a very good university and turned them down for a college that, while robust academically, paled in comparison. That probably was what spelled the eventual drifting apart that killed the friendship--I couldn't understand how studying was able to come second to swimming.
posted by hoyland at 6:19 PM on June 4, 2012
As I was making dinner, I was thinking about the fact that college athletic recruitment was probably what started driving a wedge between me and my best friend in high school. He was a mediocre member of a very good high school swim team. This was enough for him to be recruited by some Division III colleges. Which is pretty much meaningless, I think. There are no scholarships and I don't know if the coaches can exert any admission influence. But they arrange campus visits and try hard to show the recruits a good time. I slowly realised this was what was driving his decision-making, not academic opportunity. He got in to a very good university and turned them down for a college that, while robust academically, paled in comparison. That probably was what spelled the eventual drifting apart that killed the friendship--I couldn't understand how studying was able to come second to swimming.
posted by hoyland at 6:19 PM on June 4, 2012
Many other majors are, inside the academy, known to be jokes though they are thought to be respectable outside it....but I don't want to open that can of worms.
I'm curious what these majors might be, I've heard that undergraduate psychology and journalism programs have what might charitably be called a wide variation in rigour but I don't know if those are thought to be respectable outside of academia in the US.
posted by atrazine at 6:20 PM on June 4, 2012
I'm curious what these majors might be, I've heard that undergraduate psychology and journalism programs have what might charitably be called a wide variation in rigour but I don't know if those are thought to be respectable outside of academia in the US.
posted by atrazine at 6:20 PM on June 4, 2012
Memphis City Schools is a very difficult district to teach in. If Ridgeway (his high school) is/was anything like the Memphis high school where I used to teach, his athletic abilities and interests kept him out of class. That seems to be the MO for MCS. Got a game coming up during the season? Your football students are practicing. Is there some kind of a week long football camp going on somewhere? Some of your more successful players are there and not in school. It seemed like one couldn't do both, although I know that's a ridiculous position to take -- it's just easier to choose between academics or athletics if the school district implicitly or expressly allows that choice. Those dispensations produce students who don't have the ability to do basic math, or read.
NB: I only used to live near Ridgeway, have never been inside, but they are known to be one of the better performing schools in the district -- possibly because their IB program skews the metrics. Or maybe it was because the students there adhered to dress code, even while walking home?
I had a handful of students like Dasmine, and I think it's worth noting that most of my football players were some of the most polite and adult students I'd have in my classroom -- especially since they might get thrown off the team if they acted out. (One of them told me that he wanted to be "an engineer or a doctor if this football thing [didn't] work out." Class act, him, the son of a public school teacher. Really good at math, too.) Yet it was often a roll of the dice as to whether or not they'd come to class, or even do the work I sent home with them.
As noted upthread, student athletes generate revenue for the university -- and there's naturally a strong demand for revenue no matter where you look. So how do students figure they're going to escape "the trap" (in the, uh, urban sense of the term)? Play ball. For students who have already experienced a terrible academic career, throwing a ball really well is a hell of a lot easier than thinking about the quadratic formula. Colleges want them, and districts like MCS want to have high enough graduation rates so they don't look like they're dropping the ball.
posted by peeet at 6:26 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
NB: I only used to live near Ridgeway, have never been inside, but they are known to be one of the better performing schools in the district -- possibly because their IB program skews the metrics. Or maybe it was because the students there adhered to dress code, even while walking home?
I had a handful of students like Dasmine, and I think it's worth noting that most of my football players were some of the most polite and adult students I'd have in my classroom -- especially since they might get thrown off the team if they acted out. (One of them told me that he wanted to be "an engineer or a doctor if this football thing [didn't] work out." Class act, him, the son of a public school teacher. Really good at math, too.) Yet it was often a roll of the dice as to whether or not they'd come to class, or even do the work I sent home with them.
As noted upthread, student athletes generate revenue for the university -- and there's naturally a strong demand for revenue no matter where you look. So how do students figure they're going to escape "the trap" (in the, uh, urban sense of the term)? Play ball. For students who have already experienced a terrible academic career, throwing a ball really well is a hell of a lot easier than thinking about the quadratic formula. Colleges want them, and districts like MCS want to have high enough graduation rates so they don't look like they're dropping the ball.
posted by peeet at 6:26 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
Someone I know went to Cambridge as a choral scholar, at one of the colleges famous for its choir.
Now, getting into Cambridge is normally hard work and reserved for the brightest and the best.
The person to whom I refer is fine with hard work, but is not the brightest. Their voice, well, it stands comparison with the best. Things were arranged so that they were admitted and, in due course, graduated with a perfectly respectable Cambridge degree in (let us say) medieval German and forestry. Said person has absolutely no knowledge or skill with medieval German or forestry, a few decades on, and I rather doubt they did at the time.
But they had - and have - a gorgeous voice and were an adornment to the choir of said university. I have no doubt that the tutors of said person did what they could for them academically, but it was an entire sham in which The Best University In The World (tm) colluded.
I think that this was harmful in many ways, and unnecessarily so, and that the sporting equivalents in the US are also harmful and unnecessary.
Just tell the truth, recruit people for their skills and do right by them, and we can all move on. Is that so hard?
posted by Devonian at 6:33 PM on June 4, 2012 [3 favorites]
Now, getting into Cambridge is normally hard work and reserved for the brightest and the best.
The person to whom I refer is fine with hard work, but is not the brightest. Their voice, well, it stands comparison with the best. Things were arranged so that they were admitted and, in due course, graduated with a perfectly respectable Cambridge degree in (let us say) medieval German and forestry. Said person has absolutely no knowledge or skill with medieval German or forestry, a few decades on, and I rather doubt they did at the time.
But they had - and have - a gorgeous voice and were an adornment to the choir of said university. I have no doubt that the tutors of said person did what they could for them academically, but it was an entire sham in which The Best University In The World (tm) colluded.
I think that this was harmful in many ways, and unnecessarily so, and that the sporting equivalents in the US are also harmful and unnecessary.
Just tell the truth, recruit people for their skills and do right by them, and we can all move on. Is that so hard?
posted by Devonian at 6:33 PM on June 4, 2012 [3 favorites]
I'm curious what these majors might be, I've heard that undergraduate psychology and journalism programs have what might charitably be called a wide variation in rigour but I don't know if those are thought to be respectable outside of academia in the US.
At a guess, I'd hazard most subjects where the degrees aren't certified by an outside body have wide variation in rigour. Some departments don't have particularly structured majors, which means one can sometimes complete the major while missing fundamentals of the subject. Here "some departments" isn't code for lousy ones, either, rather the departments that weren't cynical enough to check the path of least resistance when they wrote the requirements. (Or amended them over time to add new courses offerings and introduced a loophole accidentally.) On the other hand, the American Chemical Society or whoever is saying "You have to require X, Y and Z", so while there may be variation in the quality or rigour of the course, at least everyone has done X, Y and Z. (Though in that example I believe many schools offer an ACS-certified major and a non-certified major.)
posted by hoyland at 7:08 PM on June 4, 2012
At a guess, I'd hazard most subjects where the degrees aren't certified by an outside body have wide variation in rigour. Some departments don't have particularly structured majors, which means one can sometimes complete the major while missing fundamentals of the subject. Here "some departments" isn't code for lousy ones, either, rather the departments that weren't cynical enough to check the path of least resistance when they wrote the requirements. (Or amended them over time to add new courses offerings and introduced a loophole accidentally.) On the other hand, the American Chemical Society or whoever is saying "You have to require X, Y and Z", so while there may be variation in the quality or rigour of the course, at least everyone has done X, Y and Z. (Though in that example I believe many schools offer an ACS-certified major and a non-certified major.)
posted by hoyland at 7:08 PM on June 4, 2012
I was -- well, I was challenged by the decision to include excerpts from Dasmine's work, e.g. "Some Important Womens." It was a jarring contrast between perceptions of him. The article portrays him otherwise as an intelligent man, strong, kind and upright, a good member of the community, and I do believe that. Yet the excerpts from his papers sound like racist impersonations that I've heard done by white folks. (I'm from a town not too far from Memphis myself.)
The fact that this makes me uncomfortable does not necessarily make it the wrong choice for the writer. I just don't know quite whether I'd have included that myself.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:45 PM on June 4, 2012
The fact that this makes me uncomfortable does not necessarily make it the wrong choice for the writer. I just don't know quite whether I'd have included that myself.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:45 PM on June 4, 2012
The irony of all this is that the Memphis football team is really pretty bad; I think they won, like 2 or 3 games last year, total. So playing football for Memphis is hardly going to get you places. Basketball is the money sport at Memphis.
But what this article doesn't say, because it is a profile of one person, a football player, is that there are many, many other students just like Cathey at Memphis, many of whom have no connection at all to sports, but have the same problems. It's not just athletes that come to Memphis woefully unprepared, and it's not just athletes that are trying to go to college while dealing with the effects of structural poverty. Which is not to say that the criticisms of big college athletics aren't spot-on, but in this case, they are part of a larger problem.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 8:15 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
But what this article doesn't say, because it is a profile of one person, a football player, is that there are many, many other students just like Cathey at Memphis, many of whom have no connection at all to sports, but have the same problems. It's not just athletes that come to Memphis woefully unprepared, and it's not just athletes that are trying to go to college while dealing with the effects of structural poverty. Which is not to say that the criticisms of big college athletics aren't spot-on, but in this case, they are part of a larger problem.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 8:15 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
And your post stinks. The NCAA and professional American sports (and other countries) encourage this kind of behavior by colleges and universities. Dasmine Cathey is one of many thousands of people who have gone on to higher education over the last 60 years who for one reason or another is not academically prepared but has been trained to be a star athlete - and that is what colleges care about.
Sports, like law schools, are money trees for higher education. A university medical center can be thought of in the same way. Sports mix that element of suspense with achievement and then bottle up alumni anxiety and outside marketing dollars into an explosive combination that tends to grow student bases more than an outstanding English department. That is only because most top-ranking English departments don't get involved with network television. You see, the admission of Dasmine Cathey can be blamed on the academy. There is no way of denying that someone had to approve of his admission. There are certainly people who can say they did not know this person, but there are many people responsible for his place.
Speaking of posts that stink...
I suppose I must say this very simply so you can follow it... Universities in general admit lots of kids who are simply neither prepared for nor interested in learning, and little changes while they're there. Athletes aren't, in my experience, all that different from most other students. The distribution is shifted a bit toward the low end, but there are still plenty of smart, capable athletes. Admitting unprepared athletes is a problem...but they are a small part of a much bigger problem.
You'll note that at Memphis--like other places--the athletes are being "channeled" through already-existing majors, like "leisure studies." The big problem is that these crap majors exist at all--and the number of non-athlete students who go through them every year is many times the number of athletes that go through them.
Your screed about college sports is irrelevant.
Try to pay attention.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 9:06 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
Sports, like law schools, are money trees for higher education. A university medical center can be thought of in the same way. Sports mix that element of suspense with achievement and then bottle up alumni anxiety and outside marketing dollars into an explosive combination that tends to grow student bases more than an outstanding English department. That is only because most top-ranking English departments don't get involved with network television. You see, the admission of Dasmine Cathey can be blamed on the academy. There is no way of denying that someone had to approve of his admission. There are certainly people who can say they did not know this person, but there are many people responsible for his place.
Speaking of posts that stink...
I suppose I must say this very simply so you can follow it... Universities in general admit lots of kids who are simply neither prepared for nor interested in learning, and little changes while they're there. Athletes aren't, in my experience, all that different from most other students. The distribution is shifted a bit toward the low end, but there are still plenty of smart, capable athletes. Admitting unprepared athletes is a problem...but they are a small part of a much bigger problem.
You'll note that at Memphis--like other places--the athletes are being "channeled" through already-existing majors, like "leisure studies." The big problem is that these crap majors exist at all--and the number of non-athlete students who go through them every year is many times the number of athletes that go through them.
Your screed about college sports is irrelevant.
Try to pay attention.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 9:06 PM on June 4, 2012 [1 favorite]
You get indentured labor and turn that into huge dollars?
No joke, they are fed a big lie about their future, worked hard at grunt work for almost no credit, and usually live in impoverished—wait, are we talking about grad students?
Oh, athletes? Not sure about that. The subset of student-athletes we're talking about, the ones who are adding value in a revenue sport, is tiny. These guys are treated like kings, they have tons of resources at their disposal to help them get to class and do their work. Many of them get quite a bunch of free shit, even though they're not supposed to. They got admitted to a learning institution they otherwise could not have attended. If that's indentured servitude, we should all be so lucky.
posted by fleacircus at 9:14 PM on June 4, 2012
No joke, they are fed a big lie about their future, worked hard at grunt work for almost no credit, and usually live in impoverished—wait, are we talking about grad students?
Oh, athletes? Not sure about that. The subset of student-athletes we're talking about, the ones who are adding value in a revenue sport, is tiny. These guys are treated like kings, they have tons of resources at their disposal to help them get to class and do their work. Many of them get quite a bunch of free shit, even though they're not supposed to. They got admitted to a learning institution they otherwise could not have attended. If that's indentured servitude, we should all be so lucky.
posted by fleacircus at 9:14 PM on June 4, 2012
I hereby suggest the creation of the B.FB degree. You get honors for winning a bowl game.
It would at least take a smidgen of the dishonesty out of the whole thing.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 11:16 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
It would at least take a smidgen of the dishonesty out of the whole thing.
posted by no regrets, coyote at 11:16 PM on June 4, 2012 [2 favorites]
Follow up article from the chronicle that citse Mefi and its denizens
posted by lalochezia at 11:04 AM on June 13, 2012
posted by lalochezia at 11:04 AM on June 13, 2012
cites!
posted by lalochezia at 11:04 AM on June 13, 2012
posted by lalochezia at 11:04 AM on June 13, 2012
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