ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The disparity between graduation rates for white and black players at schools headed to bowl games grew again this year even as overall academic progress increased for both, a study released Monday found.
The annual report by the University of Central
Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that the graduation
success rate is increasing at a higher rate for white players than black
players.
Richard Lapchick, the primary author of the study,
said it's a "disturbing" gap that has continued to widen.
"The growing gap is and has been my biggest
concern with graduations rates for some time," he said. "It's like in
the economy if income for Latinos and African-American grows at 2 percent but
increases 3 percent for whites. Yes, it's getting better. But it's still not
great for everybody."
The graduation success rate for black players went
from 58 percent to 60 percent this year among the 70 bowl teams. But for white
players, the graduation rates increased from 77 percent last year to 80 percent
this year.
The NCAA was encouraged that all graduation success
rates — not just those for whites or blacks — increased, and hoped continued
improvement for both groups in the future would close the gap.
"With such a large number of students, any
increase is important, so this improvement is noteworthy. That improvement
extends to African-American football student-athletes as well," NCAA
spokesman Erik Christianson said in a statement.
Data was collected by the NCAA from member
institutions for the study. The Institute reviewed the six-year graduation
rates of each school's freshman class that enrolled in 2003-04, then calculated
a four-class average.
Five schools had graduation success rates for black
players that exceeded their rates for white players: Northwestern (one percent
higher), Virginia Tech (3 percent higher), Southern Mississippi (three percent
higher), Notre Dame (four percent higher) and Troy (10 percent higher). That's
up from four schools in last year's study.
Notre Dame and Northwestern were the only schools
that graduated 95 percent of their players and at least 95 percent of their
black players. Air Force and Northwestern had the highest academic progress
rate with scores of 988 and 986, respectively.
Texas Tech was the lone school that had overall
graduation success rates for football players that were better than the overall
athletes. And Oklahoma was the only school that graduated less than 50 percent
of its white players.
Copyright 2010 The Associated
Press.
