2008 Woodie Awards
Project examines athletic, academic data
Jaime Fuller
Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: News
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The College plans to implement this goal through its involvement in the College Sports Project (CSP). On the CSP Web site, the group describes its mission as "a focused and intentional effort to encourage…colleges and universities to work intentionally and collaboratively in attempting to align athletic programs with educational missions." The CSP represents over 130 institutions in the NCAA Division III, including all 11 NESCAC colleges.
According to Emerson, student-athletes often have lower GPAs than their counterparts who have equally demanding extracurricular schedules.
"Past studies have documented growing differences between students who are intercollegiate athletes and those who are not," Emerson wrote in an e-mail. "But some groups of athletes do as well as or better than their peers who are not on teams. We don't yet understand the differences very well."
Administrators' fears about growing differences in the goals of the academic and athletic departments can be reinforced by students' personal experiences. Middlebury requires equally demanding and rigorous athletic and academic commitments from students, and occasionally students have to choose one over the other, according to Frank Sweeney '11. Sweeny ran into this conundrum at the beginning of this year when he ultimately had to forego playing on the football team because of the time constraints his pre-med academic track entails.
"It's not the coach's fault, it's not the team's fault, it's just [that] there [are] only so many hours in a day," Sweeney said. "If you want to be a devoted student and have a social life too, there is little time to fit athletics in."
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Recent Midd Grad
posted 10/18/07 @ 4:14 PM EST
After reading this article I was confused. I was a four year varsity athlete at Midd and can't really see the point of conducting this study. It seems to me that the potential negative results of this study will be used for nothing more than to label and generalize athletes into a category of sub-par academic performers. (Continued…)
Former Midd Parent
posted 10/18/07 @ 8:28 PM EST
I agree completely with the above comment. Not only do athletes benefit from their team experience -life-long friendships, subjugation of personal goals to those of the team, etc - the school derives indirect benefit, as well. (Continued…)
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