University of Michigan: Academic Standards vs. Football Success

Three days into a four day story on the academic options of University of Michigan athletes, Jim Carty, who took a 2-month-long leave from other duties at the Ann Arbor News to research, is revealing his findings. With a day yet to go, he paints a picture of athletes who get into Michigan through reserved spots in the kinesiology department. But since requirements for progress in that department have been raised in the last few years, these athletes often transfer to the general studies major. Along the way they are treated to independent study courses with professors like John Hagen of Psychology, who teaches how to manage time and study skills under the auspices of learning styles. Athletes who wanted to take other degree programs, like music, history, or film studies, felt like they couldn't because of the demands of their sport.

The fact is these athletes (primarily football, hockey, and basketball players from the references in the article) aren't as high-achieving as the rest of the University of Michigan student body, in which the average incoming normalized high school GPA is 3.9. Surely some athletes are able to compete in the classroom; I think of NCAA champion swimmer Alex VanderKaay who is taking the Industrial Engineering course of study. However, most football players are over-matched and out-gunned in the classroom even before you consider the hours upon hours that are required by their sports.

This raises the question: Is it possible to excel in football - defined as winning the Big Ten and top ten in the nation - while holding the football players to the same expectations as the general student body? Clearly it is not. The fraction of Michigan-caliber football players in the general high school population is very small. The fraction of Michigan-caliber students in the high school population is also small. Their intersection is vanishingly small and probably not enough to build a team around, even if you could convince all these people to attend Michigan.

How might we resolve this apparent conflict? Should we maintain a quota system on the team, whereby the the proportions of majors on the team must match the proportions of majors in the whole student body, and force majors on players in a Soviet style master plan? Should we use the same admissions standards for football players as for anyone else, and go the way of the University of Chicago? Or should we simply accept the price of admission to the world of top-level college football? Without a more appealing option, I support the status quo.

Addendum: In one section of the story, Dave Gersham compares the majors of Michigan football players to those from other schools. At Ohio State, the most common program is Business, as opposed to General Studies at Michigan. This leads to the question: how are these football players able to succeed in this program. I reject the idea that the players at Ohio State are significantly different than those at Michigan. The extremely competitive nature of high-level football recruiting means both schools draw from the same pool. This suggests that the business department itself at OSU has been more accommodating to football players, while at Michigan the departments have resisted watering down standards to accommodate these players and left them with no palatable option but that of general studies and the network of athlete-friendly professors scattered around campus. Which of these is the better model - to integrate the players into regular academic programs and give them more help or to allow them to take the general studies program without the pretense of keeping up with the rest of the student body?