Who Should Oversee Athletes’ Academic Progress?

Ty Wright for The Chronicle

Soon Ohio University will have a brand-new building reserved for the academic support of its 425 athletes.

The Perry and Sandy Sook Academic Center, expected to cost more than $6 million, is scheduled to be finished by fall. It has the look of a stadium, with high, arched entryways and a view of the football field. Inside will be more than 20,000 square feet for tutoring, group study, and computer labs. The center will replace a space about half that size.

Ohio is one in a long line of colleges that have built facilities dedicated solely to providing academic support for athletes. But a group of faculty members is asking that those services be put under the control of an academic unit such as the provost’s office rather than the athletics department. They worry that the current system might cheat athletes out of a top-notch education and could invite scandal.

The recommendations are in a report from Ohio’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. The report argues that faculty should be responsible for the academic offerings and support of all students on campus, including athletes. The proposal is meant to prevent coaches or others from trying to pressure academic-support staff and faculty members to bend the rules to keep athletes eligible to play.

Faculty, Athletic Directors Tussle Over Players’ Educations

Faculty members fear scandals and worry that players are getting academically shortchanged. Athletic directors say their staff members understand athletes’ needs best. An AAUP proposal has brought the issue to a head at Ohio University.

• How to (Maybe) Reduce Academic Fraud in Athletics

The ill effects of those pressures have shown up in a wide range of questionable activities across higher ed. Colleges have cut corners by having athletes earn iffy transfer credits. Or they’ve engaged in full-blown academic fraud, with ghost students doing athletes’ work. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a report documented 216 suspect courses and 454 potentially unauthorized grade changes, sometimes with forged faculty signatures.

Beyond overt misdeeds, there are other common ways that athletes are sometimes cheated out of a good education, says Gerald Gurney, an assistant professor of higher-education policy at the University of Oklahoma. Colleges don’t have to break rules to herd players into less-challenging majors even if they have no interest in those fields, says Mr. Gurney, who has long managed academic support for athletes, including at Oklahoma.

Despite such concerns, many faculty members at Ohio have yet to embrace the AAUP proposal. The Faculty Senate is considering a resolution of support but doesn’t yet have enough information, says Katharine B. Hartman, an associate professor of marketing and chair of a Faculty Senate committee considering the recommendations.

In response to a request for comment, a statement from the university doesn’t directly answer the question of what entity should govern athletes’ academic support: “It is important to note that the Ohio athletics academic staff supports the academic mission of the university by providing assistance to student-athletes when needed.”

B. David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration, is the main author of the AAUP paper. He emphasizes that while there are no allegations of wrongdoing at Ohio, that doesn’t mean the university shouldn’t do more to prevent problems. “It makes no sense to have an academic support unit controlled by athletics,” he says.

A Change in Culture

What Mr. Ridpath and his colleagues propose is a change in the administration and financing of athletes’ academic support, not in the type of services they receive. But a change in oversight suggests a change in culture. The current system, they say, can isolate athletes from the rest of the student body and undermine the quality of their education.

The NCAA’s Division I colleges, including Ohio, commonly require athletes to have an adviser in their major field of study — typically someone who works in an academic department. In addition, an athlete often has an academic counselor and other staff members who work with that person to make sure that he or she remains eligible under the NCAA’s benchmarks for grade-point average and credits earned. Those counselors often report to someone in the athletics department and sometimes play a large role in determining what major or courses an athlete chooses.

At colleges where these positions are filled and paid for by the athletics department, the jobs might depend on keeping athletes eligible no matter what, says Mary C. Willingham, a former learning specialist who blew the whistle on decades of academic fraud at Chapel Hill.

The football or basketball coach is often the highest-paid person on campus and carries a lot of influence, Ms. Willingham says. “The coaches were our bosses,” she says of her time at North Carolina. “Coaches would call us and say, ‘I need this kid eligible. What will it take?’ "

Unless these staff members report to an academic official, some argue, their job is more about meeting the bar of NCAA eligibility and less about helping athletes receive a valuable academic experience. That disproportionately affects black athletes in the revenue sports of football and men’s basketball, says Mr. Gurney.

“Black athletes are getting a second-class, inferior education,” he says. “And when they finish their education, they are not prepared to enter the world of work. They are, in essence, left out in the cold.”

Varying Approaches

The proposal by the Ohio AAUP isn’t exactly novel. A quarter of the roughly 350 colleges in the NCAA’s Division I, including about two-thirds of the 130 colleges in the Football Bowl Subdivision, now give control of academic support for athletes to an administrator outside of the athletic department, according to NCAA figures to be published this year. About 27 percent of Division I colleges have reporting lines to both the athletic department and to an academic official, the association reports.

Consider how athletes’ academic advising has been handled by two other institutions, Ohio State University and Weber State University.

Ohio State, 80 miles northwest of Ohio University, has about 1,100 athletes, and its revenue sports, football and basketball, are regularly among the top in the nation, in competitiveness as well as in the money they generate for the university. That pays for tutoring and academic counseling, as well as “life-skills development” to help athletes transition to other pursuits after college.

Ohio State has given David Graham, who runs the Student-Athlete Support Services Office, dual titles: assistant vice provost and associate athletic director. He oversees about 30 full-time and 100 part-time staff members, who assist athletes with course selection, tutoring, and mentoring.

On most matters, Mr. Graham primarily reports to a vice provost, he says, and decisions regarding the hiring and financing of his staff are made without oversight from the athletic director.

But, he says, “think about schools where this alignment doesn’t exist. That’s a real concern.”

Adam Lacy, Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Even with the wealth of Ohio State’s athletics, Mr. Graham’s office is located alongside other university academic-support services in the Younkin Success Center. Athletes can also seek academic support at the Fawcett Center, another multipurpose building, where the university hosts events.

Weber State University, in contrast, has tried and since moved away from the kind of model that the Ohio AAUP is proposing. Weber State is in a lower subdivision of the NCAA’s Division I, but compares better in size with Ohio. Weber has about 325 athletes on a campus of more than 17,000 students.

Athletes at Weber State use the Stadium House for Student-Athlete Success, which has 4,000 square feet of space and cost about $1.5 million to build. Academic counselors in the athletics department monitor athletes’ progress toward degrees, says Amy Crosbie, an associate athletic director. “But the class selection and graduation plans are created between the student-athlete and their major adviser on campus,” she says.

The salaries of academic advisers within athletics are under a budget governed by the vice president for administrative affairs, and the university has adopted several policies meant to prevent misbehavior. For example, any grade change that moves a player from ineligible to eligible gets a second look from administrators to ensure that it was appropriate.

“I can’t say we can police it all, but we have structures, and we communicate with the professors,” Ms. Crosbie says. “It’s well known that if they have an issue with players, they don’t call coaches; they call me.”

Resistance to Change

Many administrators and faculty members at Ohio University resist any change in athletes’ academic support.

“The efficient new space provided by the Sook Academic Center, which is entirely funded by intercollegiate athletics, is critical for our students to graduate plus maximize their academic and career potential,” says Jim Schaus, the athletic director, in a written statement. He did not comment on the questions of control and financing.

The university’s official response to the AAUP proposal suggests that the administration supports the status quo because of the special academic needs of athletes. “NCAA athletic programs require student-athletes to meet unique and stringent academic requirements for eligibility, many of which exceed typical college student requirements,” says the university’s written reply to The Chronicle’s inquiry.

The faculty athletic representative also opposes the AAUP proposal, saying that Ohio University has not had any NCAA violations that would warrant changes. The job responsibilities of support for athletes “are clearly those that fall under the umbrella of Athletics,” wrote Ann Gabriel, an associate professor of accounting.

Steve Hays, an associate professor of classics and world religions who supports the changes, says of the athletics department’s position: “I can understand that if I were a coach, I would think I know the athletes best.”

But he emphasizes a broader aim of the AAUP’s recommendations. “Athletes come here to get educated, so making these special mechanisms for them seems to encourage the athletes to look to someone else to show them how to study,” he says. “It takes responsibility away from them in a way that will be harmful to them.”

Mr. Ridpath, the associate professor of sports administration and advocate for change, has been surprised at the resistance to the AAUP’s recommendations and chalks it up largely to unfamiliarity with the process. “It’s not something that most faculty members are aware of or even want to be aware of,” he says.

He continues to press for a system that places what he sees as an academic responsibility under the aegis of an academic official. “Academic advisement,” he says, “is a faculty function.”

Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.