Beyond Exploitation: The Whole Student : NCAA plan for student-athletes is on right track

It has not been without controversy, and even some pain, but the campaign by college presidents to put more emphasis on the student part of student athletics is making progress.

While scandals involving payoffs to college athletes and other abuses continue, and Congress mutters about stepping in to clean things up if the colleges don’t do it themselves, the leaders of some of the biggest colleges are moving, slowly but methodically, in the right direction.

THE ACTION: Last week delegates to the NCAA’s 86th annual convention, held in Anaheim, voted to toughen eligibility standards for student-athletes entering college from high schools and to tighten the rules that encourage college student-athletes to make progress toward graduation. Despite some criticism, the proposals outlining the new standards were enacted by voting margins of about 3 to 1. In fact, the most encouraging thing about the reforms is that they passed with such overwhelming support.

The new academic standards are designed to enhance a measure widely referred to as Proposition 48, enacted in 1983. Proposition 48 required that incoming student-athletes meet minimum academic requirements in high school before they could compete at the college level.

Among other things, Proposition 48 required that high school athletes maintain a 2.0 grade-point average (on a 4.0 scale) and get a minimum score on either of two standardized academic tests: 700 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or 17 on the American College Testing (ACT) exam. Any high school students who did not achieve those minimal goals could still go to college, of course, but only if they gave up one year of their athletic eligibility to concentrate on their studies.

The rules adopted in Anaheim last week raise the minimum GPA to 2.5 but allow a student who has a GPA as low as 2.0 to offset that with higher SAT or ACT scores.

THE ARGUMENT: The tighter new standards were criticized by some coaches and administrators who warned that they could discourage many high school students, especially from poor or minority backgrounds, from going to college. The dissidents are especially dubious about the use of standardized tests, like the SAT, to set minimal requirements. They point out that such tests have been criticized as culturally biased.

But similar concerns were expressed about Proposition 48 when it was first enacted. Some critics warned back then that it might keep many black students, in particular, out of college. But those fears have apparently not come to pass. In fact, the NCAA Presidents Commission--the main force behind the athletic reforms--has produced statistics indicating that the number of black student-athletes competing in college athletics now is greater than it was before Proposition 48.

THE MESSAGE: That’s pretty persuasive evidence that minimal academic standards for student-athletes are not barriers to be overcome but rather are goals to be achieved. That’s why, while we share some doubts about the validity of standardized tests, we tend to agree with University of Mississippi Chancellor Gerald Turner, who told the NCAA convention that “kids will meet the standards you give them.”

So toughening the standards a bit now--and phasing them in over 5 years so that today’s high school freshmen know what will be expected of them when they apply for college--is a reasonable strategy.

Like Proposition 48 and the other reform measures that preceded them, the higher NCAA standards set last week in Anaheim send a strong, clear signal to students who want to use their athletic skills to help them get a college education: Their performance in the classroom is every bit as important as their performance on the field or the court.