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NYC Duke Fan
03-25-2007, 11:45 PM
One of the points made in Duke recruiting is the fact that they will be getting an education at one of the finast Universities in the country with a degree to match.

I know that Boozer and Jason Williams graduated in 3 years, but what about the other players who left early. Does anyone think that Deng, Maggette, or Avery or that matter McRoberts really cared about the Duke education ? Did Brand or Randolph every finish to get a degree , ( I hope that they did) ? It seems to me that the really talented player, the one that probably will not stay for the duration, really doesn't care about a ,"Duke Education or Duke Degree". I could be mistaken but I don't think so.

Exiled_Devil
03-26-2007, 12:14 AM
I am pretty sure both Shav and Elton got their degrees.

I am almost as certain that Magette and Avery did not.

I have no idea about Deng.

Exiled

Duvall
03-26-2007, 12:15 AM
One of the points made in Duke recruiting is the fact that they will be getting an education at one of the finast Universities in the country with a degree to match.

I know that Boozer and Jason Williams graduated in 3 years, but what about the other players who left early. Does anyone think that Deng, Maggette, or Avery or that matter McRoberts really cared about the Duke education ? Did Brand or Randolph every finish to get a degree , ( I hope that they did) ? It seems to me that the really talented player, the one that probably will not stay for the duration, really doesn't care about a ,"Duke Education or Duke Degree". I could be mistaken but I don't think so.

A Duke degree has great value. It does not have limitless value. A guaranteed multi-million dollar contract is a hard thing to risk.

Besides, these are all young men, who should have the time and resources to pursue any education they wish after their playing days are done.

Bluedog
03-26-2007, 12:21 AM
Someone who has a class with McRoberts told me he hasn't seen him in class the entire semester.

kexman
03-26-2007, 12:29 AM
I think a year or two at duke (or most colleges) has some educational and life value even if you don't obtain the actual degree. Duke basketball recruits are unique individuals and do not necessarily need a piece of paper. However, if they put forth some effort in their classes they will benefit from a year or two of traditional classes and being around their classmates in the dorms. Educational value does not have to be about the piece of paper on the wall, although you could make the argument that 2 more years of being at college would have added value (not just the degree).

As a total aside I think degrees are overrated...it is what you make of the experience and the opportunities. Of course I'm a professional student so the more pieces of paper I can hang on the wall the better, but it was the process to achieve the paper that was important not the actual paper.

throatybeard
03-26-2007, 09:05 AM
As a total aside I think degrees are overrated...it is what you make of the experience and the opportunities. Of course I'm a professional student so the more pieces of paper I can hang on the wall the better, but it was the process to achieve the paper that was important not the actual paper.

Yes, degrees are overrated, especially the BA/BS. This isn't 1940, when just going to a top-XX college and making some Cs gets you a job at WASP-corp, LLC. (Or in 2007, B+s). Access to Ugrad is much broader than it was even 25 years ago, and thus there's been devaluation in the financial value, even in Ugrad degrees from the top places. Something I've never understood is why Duke fans have to talk constantly about how elite and sooper-awesome the school is. Seems kind of insecure.

Kexman is on target in that it's about the social and intellectual experience.

tux
03-26-2007, 09:40 AM
I agree with the overall point, but I don't really think most Duke fans talk constantly about how great Duke is --- at least, that was never my experience with my fellow classmates. As a North Carolinian, I find UNC fans much more vocal about their alma mater. I always get the feeling that they think that I think that Duke is far superior to UNC; so, they're responding to some imaginary conversation. While I have much love for Duke, I tend to try and play down the whole I-went-to-Duke fishing for the oh-you-must-be-smart reply... Maybe I'm overly self-conscious about it... (But I bet most Duke folks in the triangle find themselves in this dynamic.)

Virginian
03-26-2007, 10:03 AM
I've never heard Duke grads -- and I of course know many of them -- talk up Duke as being elite or super. Certainly they/we don't mention our Duke connection as often and early in a conversation as you hear from Harvard and Princeton grads.

And where you get your degree DOES matter. A degree from a top college opens doors otherwise closed to grads. And alumni and professor contacts can be very instrumental in getting a job or a place in a good grad school. When I'm hiring and look at resumes I'm going to look a lot more closely at one with a Duke or Ivy League or other top-school degree on it.

Just my two cents.

wiscodevil
03-26-2007, 10:06 AM
Someone who has a class with McRoberts told me he hasn't seen him in class the entire semester.

does the ncaa penalize a school (in terms of graduation rates and academic standing) more if a student doesn't finish up the current semester vs if they finish the semester and then leave?

if so, where does duke/mcroberts stand in this regard?

throatybeard
03-26-2007, 10:24 AM
I've never heard Duke grads -- and I of course know many of them -- talk up Duke as being elite or super. Certainly they/we don't mention our Duke connection as often and early in a conversation as you hear from Harvard and Princeton grads.

In person, not as much. On the internet, ad nauseam.

Duvall
03-26-2007, 10:33 AM
In person, not as much. On the internet, ad nauseam.

Might be because the Internet treats a Duke degree as slightly worse than a nasty case of VD, while actual human beings tend not to care much.

Classof06
03-26-2007, 12:59 PM
As a total aside I think degrees are overrated...it is what you make of the experience and the opportunities. Of course I'm a professional student so the more pieces of paper I can hang on the wall the better, but it was the process to achieve the paper that was important not the actual paper.



I have some friends that never received a college degree that would probably disagree with that. To me, my diploma encompasses my whole collegiate experience. And it definitely is all about what you make of the experience and the opportunities, but the actual diploma (Duke or not) is what enables one to make the most out of those opportunities. A Bachelor's degree is certainly not the end all/be all of education, but for most people it is a foundational stepping stone to get where they need/want to be. And where you go to college is certainly not as important as it once was, but I can't imagine parents spending $45K a year to send their kids to Duke if it didn't help. I am a Duke grad, so call me biased, but I think I'm living proof when I compare myself with friends who didn't go to school at all or went to a school not as highly regarded as Duke. Like tux, I also try to play down the whole I-went-to-Duke thing and usually only mention my alma mater when asked or when basketball comes up, so I don't agree with throatybeard about it being an insecure thing. I think it's those who constantly hate on Duke who may be insecure...

dukeENG2003
03-26-2007, 01:05 PM
as a fellow Duke alum though, I can tell you very clearly that there are those who just coasted through Duke and didn't work worth a crap. As you said, its all about what you make of it, I feel I made a great deal out of it, but there are others who wasted their opoprtunities there, and we ended up with very similar pieces of paper at the end of all of it. The diploma may SYMBOLIZE the whole experience, but it is the EDUCATION that is the foundation for success, not the piece of paper, and getting the piece of paper doesn't necessarily require that much education to take place, as my freshman roomate is evidence of (he DID graduate, eventually. . .).

Uncle Drew
03-26-2007, 03:19 PM
As a life long Duke fan who didn't have the grades, yet alone the SAT's to get into Duke I must say I don't know how anyone goes to class, makes passing grades and graduates at Duke. A degree from Duke carries a lot of weight, in some peoples eyes. But right or wrong, a checking account with a couple of million dollars in our society carries more weight than any degree could. Frankly the idea of trying to play a sport on top of trying to pass a class in advanced thermocalculoptic prismascopular diversification 101 is beyond anything I am capable of.

Richard Berg
03-26-2007, 03:42 PM
I have some friends that never received a college degree that would probably disagree with that. To me, my diploma encompasses my whole collegiate experience. And it definitely is all about what you make of the experience and the opportunities, but the actual diploma (Duke or not) is what enables one to make the most out of those opportunities.
He didn't say the diploma was valueless. He said it was overrated.

Look, we don't have to argue in the abstract. Diplomas mean different things to different people, but it's not hard to put some rough numbers on the economic value. The Duke administration prices it at ~$150K. By definition, everyone who consumes at that price thinks it's worth at least that much. In fact, most economists would say it's worth far more than the price, which is why college education is heavily subsidized throughout the public & private sectors. You can estimate the value by comparing the lifetime salaries of graduates & non-graduates, subtracting the opportunity cost (4 years out of the workforce), and applying a discount rate. The estimates I've seen put the net present value at $300-400K; for a Duke degree, I wouldn't be surprised if it were closer to $1M.

(That's doesn't imply a Duke degree is twice as valuable as an average degree because the sampled populations are very different. That is, Duke-caliber students will have above-average success regardless of whether they actually attend Duke.)

NBA lottery contracts have a NPV roughly an order of magnitude larger still. Even if our estimates are off, this is an easy comparison.

Clipsfan
03-26-2007, 06:45 PM
Someone who has a class with McRoberts told me he hasn't seen him in class the entire semester.

I hope that is not true, as Duke will receive a penalty if Josh leaves in poor academic standing. However, I won't be surprised if it is true, given that he's known that he would leave at the end of this season for the past year.

Clipsfan
03-26-2007, 06:47 PM
I agree with the overall point, but I don't really think most Duke fans talk constantly about how great Duke is --- at least, that was never my experience with my fellow classmates. As a North Carolinian, I find UNC fans much more vocal about their alma mater. I always get the feeling that they think that I think that Duke is far superior to UNC; so, they're responding to some imaginary conversation. While I have much love for Duke, I tend to try and play down the whole I-went-to-Duke fishing for the oh-you-must-be-smart reply... Maybe I'm overly self-conscious about it... (But I bet most Duke folks in the triangle find themselves in this dynamic.)

Easy solution...move to the West coast where no one thinks of Duke as an academic school

Uncle Drew
03-26-2007, 07:19 PM
When I meet a Duke grad / student I'm not intimidated in the least. But I must say there is an instant amount of respect that I don't normally give out. They say respect is earned and I am the first to let others earn my respect for them. But in the case of a Duke alum the respect is there automatically unless they show me they are a complete idiot.

sagegrouse
03-26-2007, 07:57 PM
After my time at Duke, I went to grad school at Rice. I got to know a lot of undergraduates. Being in a big city (Houston), there were quite a few that commuted to school and didn't have a dorm (or residential college)experience. It seemed to me that over three or four years, the commuting students changed and grew intellectually and socially much less than those who lived on campus, even though they had the same classroom and library experience.

The interesting thing about that observation -- which I really believe -- is that if you video-recorded all the dorm interactions among students, you would have a hard time believing that anyone got anything positive out of it. I believe that with exposure to so many people, students really do learn from the best experiences not from the most mindless ones.

WRT to Duke athletics and basketball in particular, I think there are some benefits. Coach K makes sure that almost every player has beaucoup opportunities for public speaking in order to gain confidence in communications in difficult settings. I suspect there is a lot of "adult" interaction with the Asst Coaches and the tutors. And I suspect, although I do not know, that there is a good deal of interaction with the warp and woof of the student body as a whole. I would appreciate any comments.

The other thing I would say is that making it at Duke in basketball and doing decntly well in academics requires someone with maturity, good work habits, and a high degree of personal organization. In that sense it is hard to separate the input (athletes attributes) from the output (finished student).

Don't underestimate the value of the Duke experience, including academics. Or, if you have any doubts, check with Bilas, Alarie, Dawkins, D, Henderson, Ferry, and Amaker, who were at Duke 20 years ago.

Sage Grouse

Atlanta Duke
03-26-2007, 08:14 PM
Someone who has a class with McRoberts told me he hasn't seen him in class the entire semester.

Reinforces what I have heard about the coaching staff saying that McRoberts hated the going to class part of college and was gone after this season - I doubt he is catching up now for finals

If that and the story that Roy benched Lawson because he quit going to class is true, then with regard to our respective commitment to academic standards for athletes I suppose we should not be tossing any rocks down 15-501 at the moment (unless someone may be able to enlighten me that McRoberts was benched for an off-court issue for the first UNC game).

Zeke
03-26-2007, 09:35 PM
After having spent my "decade at Duke" and then more training at various other parts of the country. It is my feeling that the PG degree and/or training is far far more respected, overall, than the undergraduate degree. Also it always amused me how provencial the country is. On the west coast they have their favorites that are "far better" than any east coast schools; the same in the mid- west - local academically oriented schools are "far better" than east coast or west coast schools. Funny but if I heard it once I've heard it a lot.

bhd28
03-26-2007, 09:49 PM
Reinforces what I have heard about the coaching staff saying that McRoberts hated the going to class part of college and was gone after this season - I doubt he is catching up now for finals

If that and the story that Roy benched Lawson because he quit going to class is true, then with regard to our respective commitment to academic standards for athletes I suppose we should not be tossing any rocks down 15-501 at the moment (unless someone may be able to enlighten me that McRoberts was benched for an off-court issue for the first UNC game).

Just remember that the rumors of Josh not going to class were all over the place last year at this time as well as 'proof' that he was turning pro. What leads people to believe that those rumors are true this year? Kids drop classes all the time, and there are a lot of classes I didn't go to lecture very often. Class notes are often online, and I got a lot more out of an hour studying than an hour of listening to the lecturer. But hey, if speculating floats your boat, do so by all means. Just don't take on faith everything you read on a message board, even when someone says they have 'inside knowledge.' A few people really do, but the vast majority of people who claim to... just don't.

Atlanta Duke
03-26-2007, 10:20 PM
Just remember that the rumors of Josh not going to class were all over the place last year at this time as well as 'proof' that he was turning pro. What leads people to believe that those rumors are true this year? Kids drop classes all the time, and there are a lot of classes I didn't go to lecture very often. Class notes are often online, and I got a lot more out of an hour studying than an hour of listening to the lecturer. But hey, if speculating floats your boat, do so by all means. Just don't take on faith everything you read on a message board, even when someone says they have 'inside knowledge.' A few people really do, but the vast majority of people who claim to... just don't.

If you want to assume I am basing my post exclusively on what I read here then your point is well taken.

dukie8
03-26-2007, 11:10 PM
Just remember that the rumors of Josh not going to class were all over the place last year at this time as well as 'proof' that he was turning pro. What leads people to believe that those rumors are true this year? Kids drop classes all the time, and there are a lot of classes I didn't go to lecture very often. Class notes are often online, and I got a lot more out of an hour studying than an hour of listening to the lecturer. But hey, if speculating floats your boat, do so by all means. Just don't take on faith everything you read on a message board, even when someone says they have 'inside knowledge.' A few people really do, but the vast majority of people who claim to... just don't.

kids don't just "drop classes all the time" at duke -- particularly basketball players who have to keep their eligibility and have plenty of people watching over them. i don't know what it is like now, but i dropped social dance after 3 weeks and learning that i have 2 left feet when it comes to dancing. even though it was a pass/fail class, it still is on my transcript as a "WP" or "withdrawn passing."

i agree that a lot of what is posted anonymously on an internet message board is false. however, if this is true, and it should be easy to verify, then it casts a pretty dark shadow on k and his whole mantra about athletics. moreover, i particularly remember him this year complaining about the new rule that forces nba ready high school studs to college for a year because he felt that they would take a few classes in the fall and then bail on any attempt at academics in the spring knowing that they were going in the draft. it would be extremely disappointing if it is in fact true that mcroberts did effectively drop out of duke and k did nothing about it because he knew he needed him to win games.

hurleyfor3
03-26-2007, 11:45 PM
regarding McBob and skipping class, the same rumor was going around about William Avery... BEFORE he announced. And a couple other people I can't remember right now.

Or maybe McBob just figured out which classes he could skip. I skipped lectures all the time and rang up a 3.6. Hey, part of the college experience is learning when you can slack off.

dukie8
03-27-2007, 12:01 AM
regarding McBob and skipping class, the same rumor was going around about William Avery... BEFORE he announced. And a couple other people I can't remember right now.

Or maybe McBob just figured out which classes he could skip. I skipped lectures all the time and rang up a 3.6. Hey, part of the college experience is learning when you can slack off.

grant hill skipped spanish, failed it 2nd semester senior and didn't graduate with his class. basketball players, who largely are in over their heads at duke academically, and skipping class usually is not a good combination.

crimsondevil
03-27-2007, 12:58 AM
As a North Carolinian, I find UNC fans much more vocal about their alma mater. I always get the feeling that they think that I think that Duke is far superior to UNC; so, they're responding to some imaginary conversation.

Yes, but to be honest, I think Dukies tend to do the same about the Ivies, particularly Yale for some reason. (Maybe it's just because of Brodhead, but why Duke wants to imitate a school with a 300 year old inferiority complex is beyond me :D )
It's just natural to compare your school to the (fair or unfair) "standard". I have found this at Vanderbilt as well - they seem to want to compare themselves to guess who? Duke.

dukeENG2003
03-27-2007, 08:20 AM
as some others have said, just because you have class with someone and don't see them doesn't mean anything. If they aren't there on TEST days or days when assignments are due, it means something. I had a friend of mine in mechanical engineering with who was an econ major as well (like me). In one econ class, we didn't even find out we were in the same class until the day of the second test (he took the first test early, so I didn't see him there either). I was like "you're in this class to, crazy!" when I saw him.

Now, I saw him everyday in our engineering classes, but easier classes like that one (labor economics, the teacher actually wrote "slope=rise/run" on the board, HA) are easy to skip and still get an A. Dukie8 said it best, when you are so overburdened, you need to find areas where you can steal time, and often times, that means skipping your easy classes.

Classof06
03-27-2007, 02:41 PM
Yes, but to be honest, I think Dukies tend to do the same about the Ivies,.

I don't know about that. I met a lot of people at Duke who got into Ivy league schools but still chose Duke (I'm one of them). And not that it's the norm, but I also met people who transferred to Duke from Ivy League schools, so I can't really agree with that.