Chronicle article : Athletes and majors

[MarkD83]

I have only digested about 1/2 the Chronicle article linked on the first page of DBR. So far it is a good read.

However, I think there is a large caveat that perhaps a psychology major can help address. One of the first graphs was a list of "quantitative" majors and some tacit implication that these are the harder majors at Duke (or for that matter any school). I was a chemistry and computer science major and these subjects were easy for me because I am a very analytical thinker. The history and sociology classes I took were tremendously difficult. In those classes you had to read a lot of diverse points of view and then distill down what was critical to the topic or not and finally put together arguments based on your critical assessment of the reading. There was never a single correct answer and that made these classes very difficult. Even as a STEM major I would contend the non-STEM classes were the most difficult. (I still don't understand anything that was taught in my Philosophy of Law class but I passed.)

So, my psychological question. I know that not all athletes gravitate to "qualitative" classes, but the article shows that most do. In any athletic endeavor there are many "qualitative" factors that one has to deal with to be successful. How do I communicate effectively with my coaches and teammates to get my point across. How do I assess the strengths and weaknesses of my opponents. We also hear that great athletes have a great "basketball, football, soccer IQ". This IQ is a highly qualitative asset.

Therefore, do athletes gravitate to "qualitative" classes because in fact they are easy for them, just like "quantitative" classes are easy for folks that have analytical minds?

One last comment for all of those young athletes and students...Don't be afraid of STEM classes, they might actually be easy for you.

[CDu]

I have only digested about 1/2 the Chronicle article linked on the first page of DBR. So far it is a good read.

However, I think there is a large caveat that perhaps a psychology major can help address. One of the first graphs was a list of "quantitative" majors and some tacit implication that these are the harder majors at Duke (or for that matter any school). I was a chemistry and computer science major and these subjects were easy for me because I am a very analytical thinker. The history and sociology classes I took were tremendously difficult. In those classes you had to read a lot of diverse points of view and then distill down what was critical to the topic or not and finally put together arguments based on your critical assessment of the reading. There was never a single correct answer and that made these classes very difficult. Even as a STEM major I would contend the non-STEM classes were the most difficult. (I still don't understand anything that was taught in my Philosophy of Law class but I passed.)

So, my psychological question. I know that not all athletes gravitate to "qualitative" classes, but the article shows that most do. In any athletic endeavor there are many "qualitative" factors that one has to deal with to be successful. How do I communicate effectively with my coaches and teammates to get my point across. How do I assess the strengths and weaknesses of my opponents. We also hear that great athletes have a great "basketball, football, soccer IQ". This IQ is a highly qualitative asset.

Therefore, do athletes gravitate to "qualitative" classes because in fact they are easy for them, just like "quantitative" classes are easy for folks that have analytical minds?

One last comment for all of those young athletes and students...Don't be afraid of STEM classes, they might actually be easy for you.

There is one very important reason why they gravitate towards qualitative majors: labs. Engineering, physics, chemistry all have weekly lab sections that add an additional 2-3 hours of class time per week. That's simply not feasible for a basketball player who misses substantial time in both semesters. It might be feasible for an athlete in a "single session" sport like football. But even then, it'd be REALLY difficult.

The nicer thing about qualitative courses is that they tend to have less requirement of "in-person" time. Lots of it is - as you note - reading, writing, which can be done anywhere and especially lends itself to filling travel hours. But you can't take an electrical or mechanical engineering project with you, nor can you bring your chem lab.

That's all entirely steering clear of whether or not one is harder than the other. Personally, I found that my engineering classes were WAY harder than my econ classes. But your mileage may vary.

[ipatent]

I was an engineering major who went to law school and found both the law school courses (elsewhere) and the social science courses at Duke to be much easier than the engineering and natural science courses at Duke.

Part of the difference is that the natural science courses tended to build on the previous week's lab or lesson. If you slack off for a few weeks it is hard to catch up. The social science and law school courses were more rote memorization, making it easier to cram before the exams.

[FadedTackyShirt]

There is one very important reason why they gravitate towards qualitative majors: labs. Engineering, physics, chemistry all have weekly lab sections that add an additional 2-3 hours of class time per week. That's simply not feasible for a basketball player who misses substantial time in both semesters. It might be feasible for an athlete in a "single session" sport like football. But even then, it'd be REALLY difficult.

The nicer thing about qualitative courses is that they tend to have less requirement of "in-person" time. Lots of it is - as you note - reading, writing, which can be done anywhere and especially lends itself to filling travel hours. But you can't take an electrical or mechanical engineering project with you, nor can you bring your chem lab.

Always curious about Taymon Domzalski, an undergrad chemistry major who later graduated from Duke Med School. Did he take all his lab courses during the Summer?

[MarkD83]

I was an engineering major who went to law school and found both the law school courses (elsewhere) and the social science courses at Duke to be much easier than the engineering and natural science courses at Duke.

Part of the difference is that the natural science courses tended to build on the previous week's lab or lesson. If you slack off for a few weeks it is hard to catch up. The social science and law school courses were more rote memorization, making it easier to cram before the exams.

I am also really bad at rote memorization so that might be a part of the issue...

In my case it is easy to understand the 2nd law of thermodynamics, essentially everything moves to a state of randomness and all of the randomness must sum up to a set value (just look at the mess that is my front yard after the winter and how great my neighbor's yard looks. He obviously sent some entropy my way).

Name the genome of Lucy...(that is why I almost failed anthropology).

I will add one other point to consider. In freshman chemistry we had quizzes once a week, labs once a week 3 exams and a final. If you screwed up any one or even two of these you could still get a high B or low A. You were in no danger of failing.

Some of the non-STEM classes were graded on class participation, 1 mid-term and a paper. A lot less work but screw up any one of these and you are in deep trouble.

[Bluedog]

There was a recently reported paper by a Duke professor that evaluated the 'difficulty' of courses based on student surveys and a variety of factors - amount of work required, harshness of given grades, etc. It was overwhelming that the vast majority of Duke students saw math, science, engineering, and econ courses (maybe there were a couple other depts lumped in there) as universally more difficult that social sciences, humanities, etc. As a BME major and psych minor, I concur with that conclusion....But you're right that not everybody is the same. What is easy/hard for somebody might not be for somebody else. But in general, I think it's fair to say STEM courses 1.) require more time IN class and OUT of class, 2.) grade more harshly, and 3.) attract more intelligent students generally. There is no way to BS multivariable calculus...Having said all that, I certainly respect those that major in humanitities and don't see it as just choosing it because it's "easy" but that COULD be one reason to choose it. I enjoyed the humanities courses I took at Duke and certainly found them worthwhile and valuable, but also enjoyed them becuase they were much easier for me.

[tbyers11]

Always curious about Taymon Domzalski, an undergrad chemistry major who later graduated from Duke Med School. Did he take all his lab courses during the Summer?

Taymon was my year at Duke and a fellow Chemistry major. I know that he took several chem labs at 8am. They were offered during 8am-noon slots a few days/week in addition to afternoon times.

[rocketeli]

When you've dedicated yourself to becoming one of the best in the world at something, and succeeded you can't always put in the time to be ready for certain majors. However, I agree with the other posters: the chief determinate is time and flexibility. It's hard to hold down a full time job with a lot of travel involved and make it to chem lab or work on a hands-on engineering project or spend hours and hours setting up a computer simulation. That's why I was surprised that Kyle Singler was apparently a studio art major. That's a major that typically requires a great deal of hands-on work or projects and the grading isn't easy.

Also there was a guy at Duke when I was there who was a double major in BME and computer science. The only reason he didn't have a 4.0 was freshman english. He just couldn't figure it out--there was no one right answer...

[MarkD83]

When you've dedicated yourself to becoming one of the best in the world at something, and succeeded you can't always put in the time to be ready for certain majors. However, I agree with the other posters: the chief determinate is time and flexibility. It's hard to hold down a full time job with a lot of travel involved and make it to chem lab or work on a hands-on engineering project or spend hours and hours setting up a computer simulation. That's why I was surprised that Kyle Singler was apparently a studio art major. That's a major that typically requires a great deal of hands-on work or projects and the grading isn't easy.

Also there was a guy at Duke when I was there who was a double major in BME and computer science. The only reason he didn't have a 4.0 was freshman english. He just couldn't figure it out--there was no one right answer...

Since it has been 30 years and the statute of limitations has run out I can now admit that the worst grade I got was also in freshman english. When it came time to write the final term paper I decided it was more important to study for calculus and chemistry than to make sure I had 15 pages of words on a page and the proper references. I regret that decision only because my kids found my transcript and could not believe that anyone could do so poorly in freshman english.

[ipatent]

Taymon was my year at Duke and a fellow Chemistry major. I know that he took several chem labs at 8am. They were offered during 8am-noon slots a few days/week in addition to afternoon times.

The achievements of kids like Domzalski and Weldon Williams (the forgotten recruit of the Dawkins/Alarie class who majored in Biomedical Engineering deserve much respect.

[duketaylor]

I majored in History and minored in Anthro after starting with anticipating a major of Computer Science. I am an analytical/math sort, but realized early I couldn't attend many labs and other requirements due to our golf schedule. I did the math on percentage of classes I missed as a starter on the golf team which was/is a fall and spring sport (and had unlimited limitations of number of days competing in the 80's). I missed right at 50% of my classes; I attended summer school once and stayed a 5th year. Year 5 included 2 independent-study classes each semester (minimum requirement to be NCAA eligible). I had many classes with other athletes and came to realize if you/we showed up and made an effort we'd receive a passing grade. I was always told the hardest part of school at Duke was getting in. I agree with that and hope nobody gets upset with that assertion. I didn't always work as hard as I should've but learned to make the effort as I went along; I had many issues distracting me during school. Family being the major one, but golf as well. It taught me how to focus better on priorities and manage time properly.

Luckily, Duke had excellent resources available to athletes to be successful. I credit Tom Butters for this as well as many other great contributions he made to Duke.

Deciding on how to best use your time at Duke or what to find as your major/focus can change quickly. I have twin sons finishing their high school career now and they have an inkling of what they think they want to do. I'm betting that'll change within 3 years. Just a hunch.

I need to go back and read the article.

[Wander]

One of the first graphs was a list of "quantitative" majors and some tacit implication that these are the harder majors at Duke (or for that matter any school).

I don't think the field itself is any easier or harder. Being a serious scholar in literature is just as challenging as being a serious scholar in chemistry. But for whatever reason, I don't think that equality always trickles down to the intro level undergraduate classes. Which sucks for the perception of the departments with the easier undergrad classes. The most extreme version of this is the UNC scandal.

[MarkD83]

My take was the author of the article was trying to prove that athletes take easier classes. Classes were then divided by STEM classes being difficult and non STEM as easy. Athletes take more non STEM classes and therefore take easier classses. The discussion on the board so far is that STEM classes have more work associated with them (labs etc) which is true. Due to time constraints athletes may have to take less time consuming classes.

My thought is that easy or hard depends upon what you like and how you think rather than amount of work.

[coldriver10]

I was a pre-med Philosophy major at Duke (with Biology and Chemistry minors). I knew going in I wanted to be a doctor, so I decided to major in something different and that I enjoyed. My experience was that it was a lot of work to get an A or B in a biology or chemistry class (you really had to study your butt off, provided you weren't blessed with brilliance, which I wasn't). The vast majority of your classmates are all gunning for the same thing (med school) so it was pretty competitive. And many were graded on a curve. I honestly don't know how athletes who are pre-med or engineers do it! Meanwhile, the same wasn't really true of my philosophy classes. It was pretty easy to get a B provided you put in some effort. Now getting an A required quite a bit of thought and effort, though...I would often elicit feedback on my arguments and drafts of my papers before their submission from my professors, which I learned was necessary when my very first paper freshman year got me a C. On that note, Kant remains one of the most difficult classes I had at Duke, in any discipline.

Fast forward to now. It's 1230 am, I'm post-call from a 15.5 hour workday, posting on DBR from my phone in bed. Maybe I should have pursued a philosophy career...I have no idea what that would look like, but chances are I probably would have been in bed 2 hours ago after having dinner at home.

[westwall]

I was an engineering major who went to law school

Your screen name made this obvious! (Hope you were EE.)

[HS Dukie]

Taymon was my year at Duke and a fellow Chemistry major. I know that he took several chem labs at 8am. They were offered during 8am-noon slots a few days/week in addition to afternoon times.

I was the Grad Student TA for Taymon's organic lab - he was a bright and down to earth kid. I recall him helping other students who were struggling to complete the labs on time.

I also tutored chemistry for the athletic department for 3 years - it was remarkable how the student athletes could keep up with the lecture material and lab work. I know I didn't have their discipline and time management skills as a college freshman!

If nothing else, when one of my UNC-CHEAT friends tries to rationalize 20 + years of academic fraud with an "every school does it" defense, I have some good anecdotal evidence to quickly shut them down.

[TKG]

Attached is an article from today's Wall Street Journal on the majors of college student's generally.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/where-c...ort-1493118000

[oakvillebluedevil]

Just want to quickly give the Chron some props here -

I thought they did a nice job of handling what could be a potentially explosive topic. Rooted almost everything in facts/data (except maybe the 'most quantitative point', which is tough to measure), and got several high-level primary sources on the record saying pretty insightful things. Pretty clear that a lot of real effort went into this. I also thought the tone of the article was thoughtful and measured.

I've been critical of them in the recent past on the tone and approach they've taken to sensitive issues, but I thought this was a much more mature way of looking at things and that they deserve credit for that.

[Devils Librarian]

When you've dedicated yourself to becoming one of the best in the world at something, and succeeded you can't always put in the time to be ready for certain majors. However, I agree with the other posters: the chief determinate is time and flexibility. It's hard to hold down a full time job with a lot of travel involved and make it to chem lab or work on a hands-on engineering project or spend hours and hours setting up a computer simulation. That's why I was surprised that Kyle Singler was apparently a studio art major. That's a major that typically requires a great deal of hands-on work or projects and the grading isn't easy.

Also there was a guy at Duke when I was there who was a double major in BME and computer science. The only reason he didn't have a 4.0 was freshman english. He just couldn't figure it out--there was no one right answer...

In my experience at Duke I've found this to be true. Some students excel at abstract thinking, while others flounder if there is not a concrete answer. It's funny how a student can be a brilliant physics major but fail an ethics course, and vice versa.

[MCFinARL]

I am finding the discussion on this thread very interesting. I bristled, initially, at the article's assertion that quantitative majors were inherently more "difficult," which echoed for me the current worship of STEM generally over other fields (understandable but, like many such trends, perhaps going too far). [Personal disclosure: undergrad English major (not at Duke) who has taught freshman English, two Duke grad kids who were English and psychology majors--and chose those fields primarily because of interest and inclination rather than looking for an easy route through school.] And I really like some of the points made here--that what is "difficult" depends on the skills you bring to it, and that a field might have less difficult undergraduate courses but still not be a less challenging field overall. (Admittedly, though, my psych major daughter minored in economics and found those courses among her more challenging ones.)

As others have noted here, the most salient issue for athletes is probably the amount of time required, in class and out, to complete a course. Regular lab commitments, concepts that build on each other, etc., usually require close, steady attention throughout the semester. While Duke athletes attend classes regularly and keep up with work to the extent they can, travel and practice schedules can make that difficult at times.

Realistically, it's not a big surprise that Duke athletes, like D1 athletes pretty much everywhere, would gravitate toward majors that give them more flexibility and more time to devote to their sport.

For some, who may hope to pursue careers in sport (whether as players, coaches, or administrative/business people), and most especially for those very few who don't expect to spend more than one or two years in college, it just makes sense to prioritize the sport in selecting a major and courses.

For others, who may foresee careers in business or other fields that don't relate to a particular undergraduate major or that require a professional degree, there may not be a particular reason or burning desire to pursue any particular major (as is often true with non-athlete undergrads), so finding a path that seems relatively interesting and workable with athletics is a reasonable approach.

None of this bothers me as long as the athletes are given an opportunity to pursue the academic work they want to pursue. "Steering" athletes to less demanding courses can be sound advice if an athlete is trying to take on too much, but if it goes too far and prevents a student from learning what he/she wants to, it starts to undercut the "student athlete" ideal pretty significantly. It seemed as if the athletes quoted in this story were able to go against the suggestions of the athletics-based advisors if they wanted to, so that's good. But it can be a fine line.