New Ncaa Study Raises Controversy Blacks, Low-Income Losing Ground In Eligibility

The percentage of recruited athletes who are academically ineligible for major-college competition as freshmen has risen sharply among African Americans and students from low-income families, an NCAA study shows.

The study, which followed the NCAA’s recent tightening of freshman eligibility requirements, has prompted a year-long review of eligibility standards, according to director of membership services Kevin Lennon, who oversees academic eligibility issues.

It also has heightened controversy over the standards, which are the basis for a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA pending in Philadelphia.

The Division I Initial Eligibility Report studied all players who were recruited, or signed a letter-of-intent, for fall 1996.

Of 6,030 African Americans in the study, 1,625 (26.9 percent) were ineligible to compete in sports as freshmen in 1996. Also, 22.2 percent of students from families earning less than $30,000 were ineligible.

Those figures were up significantly from 1995, when 16.3 percent of African Americans and 14.7 percent of students from low-income families were ineligible.

The study, which Lennon said marked the first time the NCAA looked at the relationship between students’ family income and eligibility, also showed that 6.5 percent of white recruits and signees and 4.6 percent of recruits and signees from families earning more than $80,000 per year were ineligible.

“They are alarming statistics and we need to see the full report and have a discussion of it,” said William E. Kirwan, the University of Maryland’s College Park campus president and a member of the new Division I board of directors. “But on the surface, there’s certainly reason to be concerned.”

The NCAA “is committed to reviewing our initial-eligibility standards to make sure they’re doing what they were set up to do,” Lennon said, “and that’s to have student-athletes from all races and incomes who go to college and have the ability to graduate. … This is clearly an issue we’ll be spending a lot of time on.”

The issue has been among the NCAA’s most divisive since tougher academic standards were required for athletes to receive scholarships and compete as freshmen. These standards, adopted in 1984 and effective for athletes entering college in fall 1986, became commonly known as Proposition 48. The standards subsequently have been toughened twice in a six-year period.

In 1995, the NCAA increased the number of core courses required for eligibility from 11 to 13, and in 1996 implemented a sliding scale involving a combination of standardized test scores and grade-point averages in the core courses. An athlete is eligible, for example, with an 820 (out of 1,600) on the Scholastic Assessment Test and 2.5 GPA in the core courses or a 1,010 on the SAT and 2.0 core GPA.

Since the freshman eligibility standards have been in effect, graduation rates for athletes have increased, particularly among African American athletes, but these recent eligibility findings confirmed what many had feared: that fewer African American athletes and athletes from low-income families would meet the standards. (Separate NCAA data have shown that, after an initial decline, the overall percentage of African Americans on athletic scholarships has increased but still not returned to pre-1986 levels, NCAA research director Ursula Walsh said.) The new study did not specify whether the athletes fell short on SAT scores or core GPA.

Walsh said the new survey’s results were not surprising, but “it’s not any secret that we don’t have equality of education” in this country.

George Washington University men’s basketball coach Mike Jarvis agreed, and said that while he doesn’t have a problem with standards in general, he does when “all things aren’t equal.” Jarvis said educational reform is needed to help boost eligibility rates, but questioned how that could come about.

“Is it something that people really want balanced?” Jarvis said. “Most of the time things like that are by design. It’s like projects - they’re by design, and they’re not done to benefit the poor. We’ve got to start dealing with this reality, and communities have to start not only taking back the streets but taking back the schools. The only way it’s going to happen is by the people doing it.”