Hey, I was prophetic! Point is, if we're looking at how academics plays into this culture of the program thing we're talking about, I'm not sure how many all-academic players we have is the best metric to judge that. Graduation rates, overall academic progress (I believe BU had a perfect 1000 in the albeit ridiculous NCAA APR stat) whether players are actually achieving those grades or if they're inflated by professors, if they're being coddled in easy programs, a la the former Duke basketball player orchestrated sociology degree program. While it's not a good sign that we're lagging in the all-academic department, I wouldn't invest a heck of a lot of stock in it for the purpose of this task force review.
Re: Boston University 2011-2012 Part V: At least 6 more games, maybe 13... who's with
It's not even funny how easy it is.
edit - Spin spin spin. Now the measure I specified isn't important enough!
Originally posted by Greg Ambrose on 3/7/2010
The fact that you BC fans revel in the superiority of your team in an admittedly weak league leads me to believe you will be more sorely disappointed when the end comes than we will.
edit - Spin spin spin. Now the measure I specified isn't important enough!
My favorite conspiracy theory is that bu grade deflates so international kids can't transfer once they realize the school doesn't really look Iike the pictures they sent (which were probably BC) since a lot of them enroll without ever visiting first.
IIRC, the all-academics team is strictly based on GPA, and I would submit it's a heck of a lot easier to pull a 3.0 GPA at Lowell than it is to pull a 3.0 at BU. Grade deflation is a real thing, you know. If we consistently have less than BC, or maybe PC, then you've got a point. But having less than the likes of the lower level state schools in the league, that's not exactly a fair comparison, especially with respect to this case.
While mostly a football issue, there is nothing stopping a school from funneling players into specific colleges or majors or classes that are conducive to GPA achievement. I suspect the guys at USC had 3.0's but reading some of those stories about phantom classes and classes comprised of nearly 100% athletes, I'm not sure they could count that high much less earn that GPA.
I'd be concerned about a school with high academic standards never having a kid leave due to bad grades. If the general student population, who didn't get any admissions leniency due to athletic prowess, has kids fail out, then sports teams should too.
And tutoring doesn't solve it all.
Show me a tutoring program that keeps 100% of the players eligible and I'll show you one that is likely taking liberties with the school ethics guidelines.
All that being said, I would hope that admission stats, overall GPA, distribution of majors, feedback from faculty etc. are part of the AD's measurement of any sports team.
If the whole team got a 2.8, had a mix of challenging majors, was matriculating on schedule and the faculty was reporting players were in class, participating and earning the 2.8's then I'd be happier than hearing that we had a blended 3.3 GPA in Kinesiology, wasn't tracking towards graduation and the faculty was concerned the kids were getting too much help from tutors.
Given that, if another school said they had a higher GPA, I would only consider if my school was doing the best they could to fairly educate and grade players. If my team was 35% above a 3.0 I'd cross-reference that to their admission stats and determine if it made sense that our players were just inherently smarter than everybody else's.
I believe in life, and I believe in love, but the world in which I live in keeps trying to prove me wrong.
I believe they're only allowed to drink on Saturday nights, assuming there's no game Sunday or Monday. Remember the baby tiger incident involved casual drinking on a Sunday afternoon at a bar, and the infamous midweek St. Patricks Day party before the Maine HE semifinal game in 2010.
Nick I'm sure that 3.0 doesn't calculate the extreme difficulty of Crayons Glue & Scissors majors!
Grade Deflation!
I mean, if Chris Bourque could stay eligible there for even one semester, how tough could the academics there be!?
Originally posted by Greg Ambrose on 3/7/2010
The fact that you BC fans revel in the superiority of your team in an admittedly weak league leads me to believe you will be more sorely disappointed when the end comes than we will.
My favorite conspiracy theory is that bu grade deflates so international kids can't transfer once they realize the school doesn't really look Iike the pictures they sent (which were probably BC) since a lot of them enroll without ever visiting first.
That's a ridiculous theory, but I don't know how many international students are coming to BU because they want a leafy campus with a pretty quad. More likely they enroll because of strong business, communications, and science/engineering programs that are applicable wherever they come from.
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