"My rule was I wouldn't recruit a kid if he had grass in front of his house.
That's not my world. My world was a cracked sidewalk." —Al McGuire

Monday, March 17, 2008

Marquette finishes in the top 10 for graduation rates among NCAA teams

Lapchick concluded, “As always, there are schools that win big enough to be here in March and graduate their student-athletes. If we were to choose a Top Ten for Graduation Success Rates,these schools would be there: Butler, Davidson, Marquette, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Purdue, San Diego, Villanova, Western Kentucky, and Xavier. The Final Four would include Butler, Notre Dame, Purdue and Western Kentucky.”


Those were the findings of Richard Lapchick in his annual survey of the NCAA Tournament and academics released today.

The entire study can be found here....Marquette finished with a 89% graduation rate.

PDF of Ethics in Sports Study


Our pals in Madison finished with a rather pedestrian 67% (only 40% for African American players).

Another nice accomplishment by Marquette University, Tom Crean, the players and the academic staff.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hard to believe the Badgers don't graduate more considering most players are there for 5 years.

Anonymous said...

The UW-Madison numbers are actually up from where they were so they are making progress, even if they aren't in our league yet.

:)

Anonymous said...

This with the team's success says why TC earns his salary. Not only that, we have players like DJ graduating in three years. Or sitting out a player until they start hitting hte books. Some of these schools are ridiculous like Arizona, WVU, Kentucky. Winning over looking oneself in the mirror with pride.

Gene Frenkle said...

Credit to the administration and to Coach Crean for focusing on wins, and on graduating.

Anonymous said...

CONGRATULATIONS, MARQUETTE!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for highlighting this, CS. My wife and I remarked earlier in the season about how impressive it is that MU doesn't recruit just on the quality of a player's talent, but on the quality of the young man.

During one of Coach Crean's TV shows this season, he made the comment that nearly 25-30 percent of the time, they don't offer a scholarship because of character questions. Did I hear that correctly?

Kudos to MU and the program's commitment to cura personalis.

Anonymous said...

Gonzaga, NO African-American student athletes in basketball. That sounds very strange for any university.

Unless I missed something the number of African-American student athletes in the program is not factored in. So if the university has 2 African-American student athletes and graduates 2 it is 100% and if you have 13 and graduate 12 it is 92%?

Anonymous said...

The study cites both total as well as AA Bball players. MU's rate of 89% for ALL players ranks us 6th on the NCAA tourney qaulifying team list. Our non-AA rate is 100% and our AA rate is slightly lower (84% from memory but I'm not sure).

I would like to have seen Cincy listed...

Anonymous said...

Percentages mean very little unlesss you know the "n" ie. the number of students. A 100% for 1 student versus 100% for 10 students is quite different.

Anonymous said...

This is and has always been misleading. Graduate in 3 yrs with what major? Communications? Criminal Justice? It is not possible to play basketball at a good D1 school and graduate with a "real" degree. It's hard enough to do it in four years. Any objective observer knows that athletes get preferential treatment, and they only throw out these numbers as a way of distiguishing schools. The truth is less than 20% truly get an education as D1 football or B-ball players. Case study after case study has shown this to be the case when they evaluate what happens to the college athlete that doesn't play pro ball. For those of you that went or go to MU, ask yourself if you could have graduated with a 3.0 (in a legitimate major) playing basketball 4 hrs a day for 5 months. Oh, you also would be travelling all over the country and playing games as well. MU may have better student athletes than a lot of other schools, but this has and will always be a sham.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you did not get much of an education either.

Its called an objective measurable result.

I'm sure you could correlate graduation rates with time an effort spent on classwork if you were to follow every athlete with a video camera all day, but that is not to practical is it?.