A New Wrinkle/Opinion on O'Bannon Case and a Surprising Revelation

[Bostondevil]

I hear you and agree with your sentiment, but I assure you, I would have flunked out as a music major.

sagegrouse

I don't believe you. I think you could have found a way.

[cf-62]

Don't burst my bubble. Let me keep my illusions that all Duke athletes are smart enough to cut it in the (science/math/engineering) classroom, they just don't have time. Because if you convince me otherwise, the fact that we give those students more money to attend school than the ones that have the goods academically, well, where does Duke (or Stanford or Harvard) get off calling itself a top school? Are they universities or sports complexes? Math heavy lifting - I don't think mathematics gets beyond what any extremely smart person should be able to do until after linear algebra. I'm not saying get an A, I'm saying pass, scraping by with a D is enough. And yeah, I'm not saying everybody should have to do it, but they should be able to, just like they should all be able to write a coherent scholarly paper. (I would entertain arguments that first year calculus is enough, maybe. ;-) )

You misunderstand me, BD. I'm saying that at least half the student body (non-athletes) any given year CANNOT do the work towards a science major - period.

[Duvall]

You misunderstand me, BD. I'm saying that at least half the student body (non-athletes) any given year CANNOT do the work towards a science major - period.

That's an absurd claim.

[cf-62]

That's an absurd claim.

No more absurd than claiming that every Duke student could earn any major. That's ridiculous.

[greybeard]

It was the Wall Street Journal's Grid of Shame. Perhaps I misinterpreted what they said. I'll admit I didn't research it any further, but what I thought they said was that Florida International funded their athletics on the backs of non-scholarship students - $18 million of their $25 million in revenue. Here's the link. Am I wrong?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...507233498.html

But my main point is that if we're going to pay athletes, they shouldn't get scholarships too. And if we're going to start holding money in trust for them based on jersey sales, again, gotta pay the school back first. If they are employees then they shouldn't be taking classroom space from kids who are there to study. If they are students who expect to be paid, well, all right, but then we shouldn't be paying them on top of paying for them, tuition comes out of what we pay them.

"We" should be paying them what the market will bear. Many players, even those who get eligible grades through the end of the season do get something from the university. Scholarship money gives the Universities something of value--the ability to have some nexus between the players they field and the University for whom they play.

The bigger question is who pays the medical bills and insurance costs, short and long term, for the earners. The earners are all those who permit a school to field a well practiced and competitive (multiple players competing for positions). This question is huge is was highlighted by Roger's explanation for why the players took such a small settlement--the difficulty in proving when the problems pro retirees suffer from occurred, high school, college, and the pros.

I happen to think that there ware ways that even now without testing, imaging, could tell actuarially, but the NFL is going to have a hard time defending on such grounds given the revelations about the wide=spread and de facto mandatory use of anti inflammatories and pain killers week in and week out in the pros.

Be that as it may, the revenues from these sports should be required to foot the bill for these so-called revenue sports and we shall see how much revenue is in the end produced. Maybe the costs would force businessmen, er, educators, to look out for the welfare of the young people who play for them to keep astronomical health, rehabilitation, lost earning, and life assistance costs down to leave the universities in the black, if that were possible. Now, guys like Sabin discard star recruits who blow out knees like oranges at Walmart that have begun to rot. Like Walmart, they get away with trating players/employees like oranges because, well, they can.

[Bostondevil]

No more absurd than claiming that every Duke student could earn any major. That's ridiculous.

Sigh. Really? Perhaps it is an absurd claim, but it shouldn't be.

[Jarhead]

I hear you and agree with your sentiment, but I assure you, I would have flunked out as a music major.

sagegrouse

Sage, I am having problems with Bostondevil's insistence on lumping athletic scholarships with merit scholarships. To me, merit scholarships are those that are awarded on the basis of academic qualifications. They can vary in amount, and may have time limits and academic performance requirements. Athletic scholarships may also vary in amounts, but they are awarded only to athletes who participate in designated varsity sports. They also may have limitations from the NCAA, or Title 9 requirements. I have no idea if Title 9 applies to other scholarships.

I expect that the source of the funds for athletic scholarships come mostly from revenues earned by DUAA, or donated restricted gifts. Merit scholarship funds consist mostly of gifts from myriad sources and include the well known Angier B Duke Memorial scholarships. These two financial aid categories are not based on the financial status of the student. The rest of the financial aid given to 86.6% of the students receiving financial aid is need based provided by the university. Some rules were mosified around 2008 and were included in link Bostondevil gave us at the beginning of this thread. It said this:

Results of Duke's Financial Aid Initiative (2008)

As part of our ongoing commitment to make high-quality undergraduate education more affordable, Duke announced in December 2007 a series of enhancements to its need-based undergraduate financial aid program that took effect in the 2008-09 academic year. These enhancements include:

• eliminating the parental contribution for families with institutionally determined incomes less than $60,000
• eliminating loans for families with institutionally determined incomes less than $40,000;
• reducing loans for students from families with incomes up to $100,000; and
• capping loans for eligible families with incomes above $100,000.

That's pretty interesting, and seems to equal the generosity of Harvard mentioned earlier in this thread. This need based aid is real, and has been going on for years. Sometime ago a young man in high school worked as a bag boy at my favorite golf club down here. His dad was my barber, and one day he showed me the admissions documentation he got from Duke. The lad had been admitted to Duke, and the documents showed about $35,000 charged for his freshman year, but the amount to be paid was around $3,500. He went through his 4 years in pre-law, worked mostly in the Bryant Center. What he couldn't pay, his dad paid. He went to law school at Ole Miss, and is working at his profession in Memphis after several years in Mississippi. I am proud of my alma mater for that.

Maybe I'm rambling but I wanted to get that in. Another on I want to get in is Dave Harding, #74, on Duke's football team. He was featured on Coach Cut's TV show last Sunday, and is now a grad student in Public Policy. He spends a lot of time volunteering around town with kids. He was also among the group of guys from the team that spent the summer in Africa digging wells in remote villages. That's another thing that makes me proud of my University.

The system that Duke and a bunch of other colleges follow seems to work, and it doesn't include salaries for its athletes. The only change that may be necessary would to make sure that athletes are cared for in the same way that the need based students are cared for. No more, no less. Coach Cut would agree with that, I am sure. I'm pretty sure that a lot of his players would fit into the need based category, but are they getting the same benefits? I am not sure. Are the need based non-athletes provided tutoring when needed? I don't know, but I got it, free, my freshman year. The WWII GI Bill covered my $500 tuition, student fees, and books and supplies. They gave me an allowance of $75 per month to cover other expenses. I don't know who paid for my tutor. By the way, Duke was one of the few institutions that did not raise its tuition when WWII price controls were abolished at the end of the war. They waited until all of the GIs were no longer in school. At that time the VA had a tuition maximum of $500.

[Duvall]

No more absurd than claiming that every Duke student could earn any major. That's ridiculous.

Making a strong claim about every member of a population of more than 6000 is inherently absurd. But you seem to be dramatically overestimating the difficulty of getting passing grades in a dozen or so undergraduate courses.

[AncientPsychicT]

I'll admit I don't have statistics to back up my argument. I have only anecdotal evidence. I did ask an Ivy League physics professor recently how many athletes he usually has in his upper level physics class (for physics majors). None. Not a one. Hasn't had a single athlete in the class for a decade and I'm not just talking football, no varsity athletes in any sport. Now - are there no athletes capable of a physics major or is the time just too much to ask? I suspect it's the time factor. I could be wrong.

FYI, #97, Rowland Pettit, is in my Modern Physics (Physics 264) class. This class is high enough in the physics curriculum that the only people who take it are physics majors/minors. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[cf-62]

Making a strong claim about every member of a population of more than 6000 is inherently absurd. But you seem to be dramatically overestimating the difficulty of getting passing grades in a dozen or so undergraduate courses.

You're right - the reality is probably not as high as my claim. I used hyperbole to get a point across.

It's not a statement about students' ability to succeed, or about their intelligence. But the Blue Devil highway is littered with Honor students that couldn't get higher than a C in MATH 32 or PHY 51. Those students CAN NOT complete a science major. And don't throw the "it's just 12 classes, and they only have to pass them" garbage. The 12 classes are stacked on each other.

Understand, I am NOT claiming that science majors are smarter, or better at anything other than their ability to grasp and use mathematical concepts easier and quicker than their counterparts. Many of them (as BD has pointed out) have trouble putting 5 coherent sentences together in a paper - and the thought of writing a 10 page or 20 page these would make them break out in a cold sweat.

There ARE differences between student bodies as a whole. The statistics bear that out. It's about collective levels of success. Our classmates who are also athletes certainly fit within that achievement level. I'm talking about continuation and graduation rates. The LAST time I looked, which has been a while, Duke had a 97% continuation to Sophomore year, and a 92% graduation rate within 5 years of matriculation. Compare that to a 60% graduation rate 9 miles down the road, and 50% graduation rate down in Raleigh.

[Bostondevil]

Sage, I am having problems with Bostondevil's insistence on lumping athletic scholarships with merit scholarships.

I'm not!

Sadly, Duke's generosity doesn't come close to Harvard's. It has to do with endowment size, but parental income has to be over something like $300,000 for a student to pay the "full ride" at Harvard. They calculate tuition based on a sliding scale of parental income.

As I said before, at a grand total of $250,000, no student can work their way through Duke any more. All students mush either receive financial aid or have parents who can foot the bill or be exceptionally good athletes. Financial aid packages also do not take into consideration anything but parental income and how much the parents have saved (parents are actually penalized a little bit for saving too much because they have more ability to pay). Things that don't rate in calculating who needs financial aid - number of siblings, serious medical conditions in the family, willingness to pay (if mom and dad are divorced and one of them isn't willing to pony up? Too bad.) And seriously, if your parents make $80,000 a year, you don't qualify for financial aid but you sure can't afford to go to Duke. Unless you're really good at a sport. Merit based awards go to students regardless of demonstrated financial need. So do athletic scholarships. I don't see a difference. Who cares that the money that funds them comes from different piles. Athletes show up on campus with sports as their primary duty. Other merit scholarship recipients show up with academics as their primary duty. Which group, really, should a top university want to attract to campus?

[Bostondevil]

FYI, #97, Rowland Pettit, is in my Modern Physics (Physics 264) class. This class is high enough in the physics curriculum that the only people who take it are physics majors/minors. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Again - AncientPsychicT - awesome! Also proving that Duke > Ivy League!

Oh wait, he's a freshman and it's not lacrosse season. I'll bet you that he doesn't stay a physics major/minor.

[snowdenscold]

Understand, I am NOT claiming that science majors are smarter, or better at anything other than their ability to grasp and use mathematical concepts easier and quicker than their counterparts. Many of them (as BD has pointed out) have trouble putting 5 coherent sentences together in a paper - and the thought of writing a 10 page or 20 page these would make them break out in a cold sweat.

Hey, I resemble that remark!


Actually, I'm probably much better at the latter now than I was back in college, where any paper longer than 3 pages scared me to death at the time.


And like someone said above, it's the fact that all these math courses build on one another. Sure you can struggle through one or two and get a C or a D, but it's not like you can then hit the reset button and start fresh next semester - you actually need to use and implement previous courses for the next.

[Bostondevil]

You're right - the reality is probably not as high as my claim. I used hyperbole to get a point across.

It's not a statement about students' ability to succeed, or about their intelligence. But the Blue Devil highway is littered with Honor students that couldn't get higher than a C in MATH 32 or PHY 51. Those students CAN NOT complete a science major. And don't throw the "it's just 12 classes, and they only have to pass them" garbage. The 12 classes are stacked on each other.

Understand, I am NOT claiming that science majors are smarter, or better at anything other than their ability to grasp and use mathematical concepts easier and quicker than their counterparts. Many of them (as BD has pointed out) have trouble putting 5 coherent sentences together in a paper - and the thought of writing a 10 page or 20 page these would make them break out in a cold sweat.

There ARE differences between student bodies as a whole. The statistics bear that out. It's about collective levels of success. Our classmates who are also athletes certainly fit within that achievement level. I'm talking about continuation and graduation rates. The LAST time I looked, which has been a while, Duke had a 97% continuation to Sophomore year, and a 92% graduation rate within 5 years of matriculation. Compare that to a 60% graduation rate 9 miles down the road, and 50% graduation rate down in Raleigh.

OK - you win not every student at Duke can pass math. Every science major has to take at least one class where they write papers though - so every student at Duke does have to write well enough to pass that class. I double majored in math and computer science and I'm a published author and I play multiple musical instruments. I can't draw for expletive though so I would have struggled mightily if I'd majored in art. I do kinda have the attitude that if I can do it, so can you, but perhaps that isn't true. Still, I want to look at the majors of the athletes, if there is a comparable mix of majors, then I concede your point that they fit within that achievement level. If, as I suspect, the sciences and mathematics are way under-represented in the majors of our athletes, I do not concede your point.

[missfinch]

Again - AncientPsychicT - awesome! Also proving that Duke > Ivy League!

Oh wait, he's a freshman and it's not lacrosse season. I'll bet you that he doesn't stay a physics major/minor.

Sophomore- was in my son's pledge class last year.

[Bostondevil]

Sophomore- was in my son's pledge class last year.

Oops, yes, the goduke website has last year's roster. So back to awesome! Duke still > Ivy League!

Hey AncientPsychic - do you know missfinch's son too?

[cf-62]

I do kinda have the attitude that if I can do it, so can you, but perhaps that isn't true.

It's NOT true, BD. To be honest, I didn't meet a single Poli Sci or English major in school (or since) that could do anything besides the high school level calculus classes, for which they mostly received C's or D's (a few B's, a few F's).

I personally know 3 people that transferred from EGR to Trinity because the math/science was overwhelming. AFAIK, I was the only member of my class to transfer INTO engineering (out of my Math / CPS double major).

That's great that you fall into the rarified air of mathemtician that likes to write. I know the feeling. But 90% end up on the one side or the other.

[sagegrouse]

It's NOT true, BD. To be honest, I didn't meet a single Poli Sci or English major in school (or since) that could do anything besides the high school level calculus classes, for which they mostly received C's or D's (a few B's, a few F's).

I personally know 3 people that transferred from EGR to Trinity because the math/science was overwhelming. AFAIK, I was the only member of my class to transfer INTO engineering (out of my Math / CPS double major).

That's great that you fall into the rarified air of mathemtician that likes to write. I know the feeling. But 90% end up on the one side or the other.

Uhhh,... the social sciences at the PhD level are very mathematical. Almost all of these folks were undergrad majors in the social sciences.

Of course, your statement could still be true.

sagegrouse

[cspan37421]

Just my $0.02 -

I'm not sure when the above respective posters attended Duke, but today's Duke students are incredibly strong across the board. I would suspect that there are many more liberal arts majors there today who could do a science or math major just fine (if it was their passion) than there were in years past. And many engineers who have as much a facility with words as their A&S counterparts. So I don't agree with the "five sentences" conjecture either. Not among today's students.

A very imperfect measure, esp. since IIRC SAT math doesn't include calculus:

Class of 2017 - SAT V/M, Trinity, middle 50%: 690-780/700-790
Class of 2017 - SAT V/M, Pratt, middle 50%: 700-780/750-800

However, the admissions office looks at HS curriculum, grades, etc., and it's expected that any successful applicants (perhaps outside of recruited athletes) take the most challenging courseload offered, and that's going to include calculus even if you're intending to major in English or history. Duke's applicant pool is an embarrassment of riches these days, and they can get their cake and eat it too with respect to engineers who can write and liberal arts majors who can do math and science.

[Bostondevil]

Just my $0.02 -

I'm not sure when the above respective posters attended Duke, but today's Duke students are incredibly strong across the board. I would suspect that there are many more liberal arts majors there today who could do a science or math major just fine (if it was their passion) than there were in years past. And many engineers who have as much a facility with words as their A&S counterparts. So I don't agree with the "five sentences" conjecture either. Not among today's students.

A very imperfect measure, esp. since IIRC SAT math doesn't include calculus:

Class of 2017 - SAT V/M, Trinity, middle 50%: 690-780/700-790
Class of 2017 - SAT V/M, Pratt, middle 50%: 700-780/750-800

However, the admissions office looks at HS curriculum, grades, etc., and it's expected that any successful applicants (perhaps outside of recruited athletes) take the most challenging courseload offered, and that's going to include calculus even if you're intending to major in English or history. Duke's applicant pool is an embarrassment of riches these days, and they can get their cake and eat it too with respect to engineers who can write and liberal arts majors who can do math and science.

Yeah, I hope this is true. I think it should be. Duke gets over 30,000 applications a year. With that big a pool, they should only be taking the techies who can write and the fuzzies who can calculate. It's a liberal arts school.