Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2008 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Division I Basketball Tournament Teams
Source: University of Central Florida, College of Business Administration, Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida released its annual study, “Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2008 NCAA Men’s and Women’s Division I Basketball Tournament Teams,” which compares graduation rates for Division I teams that have been selected for the men’s and women’s brackets of the 2008 NCAA Basketball Tournaments. The author of the study is Dr. Richard Lapchick, who is director of The Institute and of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program at UCF. The study was co-authored this year by Eric Little.

The study examines the Graduation Success Rates (GSR) for the tournament teams. The study compares the academic performance of male and female basketball student-athletes and of African-American and white basketball student-athletes. The study on the men’s tournament teams was released on March 17th.

Lapchick emphasized that “women basketball student-athletes do much better academically than men and the gap between the academic success between African-American and white women’s basketball student-athletes is smaller, although still significant, than between African- American and white men’s basketball student-athletes. Women have regularly been the best news academically in college sport.”

Lapchick noted “the new GSR, developed in late 2005, provides a more accurate picture of the success student-athletes have in the classroom at NCAA member institutions. Based on the GSR, 62 women’s teams (98 percent, equal to that in 2007) of the total graduated at least 50 percent of its basketball student-athletes. That compared to 41 men’s teams (64 percent, equal to that in 2007).”

+ Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2008 NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball Tournament Teams (PDF; 148 KB)
+ Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2008 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament Teams (PDF; 147 KB)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Education, Postsecondary, Race, Social and cultural issues, Sports, recreation and leisure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.