Where US education is getting it wrong

[Gob]

[oldr_n_wsr]

Football coaches (and players) usually yield a net profit for the universities. Without that profit other sports teams and academic pursuits will not be funded.

Big time football at many universities is big business from ticket sales to memorabilia sales (jersies, ect) to alumni donations, the school itself usually makes a good deal of money from the deal.

[Big RR]

Oldr--Costs for football are also exorbinant, from the high coach salaries (and not just for the head coach0 to the building of mega stadiums and training facilities, to the owning/chartering of aircraft for travel to and from games, to equipment and scholarships, etc. Yes, some big name schools get revenues from that and alumni interest/donations, but many don't. Try amortizing a $100-$200 million plus stadium with state of the art vide screens, etc., and you'll see it's difficult to see the profit. Also, something is difinitely wrong when the coach makes 10 times what senior tenured faulty makes, especially because a unoversity is supposed to be an insitution of higher learning, not a farm league for the NFL (and look how many of those full shouse scholarship athletes graduate--damn few, even after 5 years at the school).

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy college football, but it shows a real skewing of educational priorities when one sees the resources dumped into it. I'd rather see an end to the facade, and an end to schools sponsoring teams; start a monor league system like baseball has, and pay the players as well as the coaches for their time and committment.

Edited to add: sorry, I forgot this was siupposed to be the jokes page; the following is a real joke of the graduation rates of the premier college football conferences in the US (from MSN.com):

FOOTBALL

Football Graduation Rates: Pac-10
Stanford 89%
Washington 69%
Cal 64%
Washington St. 62%
Arizona St. 58%
USC 58%
Oregon St. 57%
UCLA 51%
Oregon 49%
Arizona 41%

Stanford again leads the Pac-10 in football graduation rates by a wide margin. Washington, after dropping down to third place last year, has regained the # 2 spot on the list. For all schools in the "Football Bowl Subdivision" (formerly known as Division I-A), the overall football graduation rate is 67%. Once again this year, eight of the Pac-10 schools are below this FBS average. Although several of the Pac-10 schools have elite academic aspirations for their overall student bodies (we're thinking particularly of Cal, UCLA, and USC), they continue to report below-average football graduation rates. Cal's grad rate has improved and is now 64%, which is third in the conference, but frankly, the competition in this conference isn't that tough. Cal would rank just 8th in the Big 10 or 10th in the ACC. Arizona once again brings up the rear, with the worst grad rate of any BCS conference school.

Football Graduation Rates: Big 10
Northwestern 92%
Penn St. 85%
Iowa 74%
Michigan 71%
Illinois 69%
Indiana 67%
Wisconsin 65%
Ohio St. 62%
Purdue 59%
Michigan St. 56%
Minnesota 54%

Northwestern leads the Big 10 once again. Penn State is a surprisingly strong second in the conference with a grad rate of 85%. Ohio State showed the most improvement, going from 52% last year to 62% this year.

Football Graduation Rates: SEC
Vanderbilt 91%
Mississippi 69%
Florida 69%
Alabama 67%
Mississippi St. 63%
South Carolina 60%
LSU 60%
Auburn 59%
Georgia 57%
Kentucky 55%
Tennessee 52%
Arkansas 52%

In the SEC, as in the Pac-10, one school is far ahead of the others in graduation rates - Vanderbilt. As we noted last year, Florida continues to have an exceptionally large difference between its Graduation Success Rate (69%) and its federal graduation rate (42%). The main difference between the two methods is how they count transfers. Outgoing transfers count against the federal graduation rate but do not count against the GSR. We can conclude, then, that Florida continues to have a very high number of outgoing transfers. Georgia has pulled its graduation rate up from 41% to 57% in just two years, finally moving out of last place in the SEC.

Football Graduation Rates: Big 12
Nebraska 72%
Baylor 70%
Texas Tech 69%
Kansas St. 66%
Missouri 64%
Iowa St. 64%
Colorado 64%
Oklahoma St. 61%
Kansas 58%
Texas A&M 55%
Texas 49%
Oklahoma 45%

There are no stand-out graduation rates in the Big 12 - at least, no stand-outs on the positive side. Nebraska has the top grad rate in the conference this year, but ranks only 17th among BCS schools. Last year's Big 12 leader, Texas Tech, fell from 79% last year to 69% this year. We imagine somebody will be sent to the closet for that. Oklahoma and Texas have the second and third worst graduation rates among BCS conference schools.

Football Graduation Rates: ACC
Duke 96%
Boston College 91%
Wake Forest 81%
North Carolina 80%
Miami 75%
Florida St. 73%
Virginia Tech 71%
Virginia 68%
Clemson 67%
Maryland 60%
North Carolina St. 57%
Georgia Tech 49%

The ACC had the best football graduation rates among the BCS conferences again this year. Nine of the twelve ACC schools finished at or above the overall FBS grad rate of 67%.

Football Graduation Rates: Big East
Connecticut 82%
Rutgers 81%
Syracuse 77%
Cincinnati 75%
Pittsburgh 68%
West Virginia 61%
South Florida 60%
Louisville 59%

Connecticut once again leads the Big East in graduation rates, but Rutgers is coming on strong. Rutgers has raised its graduation rate from 55% to 81% in just two years, which is remarkable. In fact, it's such a remarkable improvement in a four-year rolling average that we wonder a little bit about that.

Football Graduation Rates: Selected Others
Notre Dame 96%
Navy 93%
TCU 65%
BYU 61%
Boise St. 58%
Utah 57%
San Jose St. 33%

TCU and Boise State both qualified for BCS games, but neither of them is going to win any awards for their graduation rates, both of which are below the FBS average of 67%.

A few are OK, but many are downright laughable--and this is in schools which generally dumbed down the academics and created majors just for the athletes so they could qualify to play.

[Crackpot]

I recall hearing somewhere that it's the midlevel football schools whose programs really cost them. The Big Football schools make enough from merch, alum, ticket sales, etc. to more than cover their costs. The low level schools simply don't spend on it. But the schools in the middle especially the ones that are almost "big" lose their shirt on their football programs to the detriment of other programs and studies.

[Guinevere]

The Ivies do it right -- football (and all sports) is an extracurricular, not the entire reason to be in college. And its still a lot of fun, the fans are just as passionate as any Big-10 fans, and the players have a graduation rate which is in the upper 90s. But that fact that this is sport is put into its correct place.

Oh and the teams have great success too -- just look to the basketball team which made the Sweet Sixteen on last year's NCAA tournament; hockey made the frozen four (and the women played in the final); and lacrosse also made the final four of that tournament. Football is played in Division 1-AA, so national championships are never at stake, but who cares anyway.

[Big RR]

Guin--from what I understand, the ivies also do not offer sports scholarships; sports may get you additional consideration for admission (I think the same is true for the military academies), but it will not get you any money. I think sports can be a good adjunct to academic pursuits, but the mission of a college should be academics, not sports, ad this should be relflected in their spending patterns. At Rutgers the football head coach makes well over $1 million a year (I think around $1.4 million) and his the highest paid employee in the state of NJ (this on top of a nearly new stadium that was rennovated for around $100 million a few years back)for a state which is nearly bankrupt and cutting everything, the priorities are defintely screwed up (and I say this as a college football fan).

[Gob]

Cheerleader scholarships cost how much?