Whoop De Freaking Do

So- big doin's in 'Naptown (Indianapolis, for haters)- the NCAA has released it's graduation rates for 2005. Hey, guess what? They went up 1% from last year.

Hooray! Whoops- not so fast my friends. The data also shows:

athletes in general graduated at a higher rate than other students at their institutions, Division I male athletes in general fell short of other male students (56 vs. 58 percent), and football players (55 percent) and men’s basketball players (46 percent) were lower still. And the numbers were even lower at the Division I-A level, the NCAA’s top competitive level, where 41 percent of men’s basketball players and 42 percent of baseball players earned their degrees in six years. (Granted, those numbers are all generally on the rise, as NCAA officials are rightly quick to note.)

As you can imagine, not everyone is excited and there are higher expectations:

“These figures understate the gap between the graduation rates of the general student body and athletes, since many regular students fail to graduate for financial reasons, which is not an issue for athletes on full scholarships.”

Or, as the guys at TheWizardofOdds put it:

63% of all scholarship athletes who entered Division I colleges in 1999 had graduated within six years, compared to 61% of all students at those institutions... But we have to wonder what the graduation rate would be for the general student body if it had access to tutors and academic centers and everybody could be on scholarship and not worrying about paying the rent.

Amen...