When an overzealous father inquired about the presence of "dumb jocks" on the Hill during the Parents' Weekend Dewick Sunday brunch, he was met with blank stares, vague replies about "knowing some athletes" and hasty returns to the water dispenser. This particular subspecies of college student is rare at Tufts, and seems to be growing rarer nationwide.
According to a press release from earlier this month, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) reports that 79 percent of student-athletes who began their undergraduate studies in the fall of 2001 graduated within six years. This six-year graduation rate is the NCAA's highest ever, up one point from last year, and is boasted as higher than the national average for all students.
The way the average is calculated can be complicated. It takes into account transfers to and from Division I schools. The average, however, does not match up with the latest statistics released by the federal government, which show that 64 percent of student-athletes who began college between 1998 and 2001 graduated within six years.
This government number does not take transfer student-athletes into account, which NCAA President Myles Brand estimated reduces the pool of those considered "student-athletes" by 37 percent.
The increase in graduation can be attributed to two systems Brand has implemented during his NCAA presidency: higher initial-entry standards and rewards for teams with higher graduation rates and penalties for those with low ones. Initial-entry standards are the threshold a student needs to reach in high school to get a spot on a Division I or Division II team. They take the form of a sliding scale, meaning that the lower the grade point average (GPA), the higher the SAT section scores need to be, and vice versa.
While these standards may seem laughable to Tufts students -- an athlete with a 3.550 GPA only needs an SAT score of 400 on each section for entry into a Division I school -- they seem to be effectively filtering the quality of student-athletes that enter Division I and Division II schools, Brand claims.
Tufts has never had the same history of controversy surrounding the academic performance of athletes as some other schools. According to Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman, the average GPA on most varsity teams -- both men's and women's -- tends to be higher than the overall average at Tufts for each respective gender.
Accordingly, the academic performance of athletes is a moot point within the athletics department.
"The issue never even comes up [at meetings because] it's not an issue," Assistant Athletics Director Branwen Smith-King said.
The overall academic requirements to attend Tufts in the first place are higher than the initial-entry standards to play in the NCAA, pointed out junior Alex Grzymala, a baseball player. Senior teammate Eric Catalanotti agreed, adding that "Coach [John] Casey ... monitors academics ... and [although] his number one goal for the team is ... to win baseball games ... his number one goal for the 25 guys on the team is to get them a four-year degree."
The NCAA may have an increasing overall graduation rate, but some sports are severely lagging: Graduation rates for men's football, baseball and basketball average ten to fifteen points below the overall rate.
Although Tufts is part of the NCAA, its status as a Division III school is significant. With a lesser emphasis on athletics by the student body, student-athletes' focus is often mostly academic.
This results in more Tufts athletes who want to study and fewer who want to make a quick break for ESPN territory. Smith-King called this "an education approach to athletics."
Reitman agreed, adding that athletes have "to care at least as much about [their] academics when [they] come to a place like Tufts as [they] do about [their] sports."
