Over the past few years, National Collegiate Athletic Association eligibility reforms have shown an increasing commitment to maintaining academic integrity among the student-athletes and universities it supervises. While these reforms have been commendable, recent news has proven that a large blind spot remains: high school academic requirements. The organization must now take strong measures to fix these lax requirements, or its academic reforms will be ineffective.
The issue surfaced around the case of University High School, an unaccredited, Miami-based correspondence school. Over the past two years, at least 28 athletes with NCAA talent but without minimum NCAA grades have taken correspondence “courses” from the school and seen sudden rises in Grade Point Averages. Former University High student and current Auburn football player Lorenzo Ferguson admitted to The New York Times that it was little time commitment, and the answers were essentially provided.
NCAA President Miles Brand said that schools such as University High should be shut down for reasons that transcend athletics, but he has also suggested that this practice might not be uncommon. The organization has allowed correspondence schooling to satisfy eligibility requirements since 2000, and since then it has essentially placed the onus on individual schools to determine if a potential athlete’s schooling is legitimate. “We’re not the educational accreditation police,” Diane Dickman, the NCAA’s managing director for membership services, was quoted as telling The New York Times in September.
Perhaps not, but there is no reason sham schools such as University High should not be detected. The NCAA already runs a Clearinghouse which clears every potential student-athlete for eligibility, and anomalies such as mid-senior year transfers and sudden GPA rises should be recognized as red flags that prompt further investigation.
The “diploma mill” problem may also to point to a more fundamental flaw in eligibility requirements. The Clearinghouse currently uses a sliding scale that takes into account GPA and standardized test score, with higher GPAs needing a lower test score for eligibility. So while a student with a minimum eligible GPA of 2.0 needs a 1010 on the SAT to pass, a student with a 4.0 needs a 400 (the minimum possible grade on the SAT). This system defies common sense–it is rare that a student with a 2.0 GPA scores so high on the SAT, while there is no reason for a straight-A student to answer every SAT question incorrectly. Such bizarre requirements simply make quick-fixes for a student’s GPA more attractive, and more worthwhile.
Ultimately, the NCAA cannot rely solely on universities, which are always looking for a competitive edge, to regulate their recruits’ education. There needs to be a closing of the “diploma mill” loophole and stiff penalties for schools that attempt to recruit such athletes. This is in the best interest of the recruits themselves, who are unlikely to retain academic eligibility once they enter college, and of the competitive balance in college sports, as schools who abide by the rules will no longer be upended by those willing to cheat.
