College admissions standards are meant to determine whether a student is academically prepared to succeed at college. Colleges also have Minimum Admissions Requirements (MARs) and Minimum Course Requirements (MCRs), which … Continue reading “Did You Know? Student-Athletes Can Be Admitted to UNC Schools Despite Low Academic Success”
Fans in the Carolinas are crazy about college sports. Six schools in the Carolinas boast membership in the “Power Five” Atlantic Coast or Southeastern Conferences, and they often perform quite … Continue reading “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who Spends the Most on Athletics of All?”
Jenna A. Robinson, President Jacques Barzun’s magnum opus, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, has been a revelation—of my own inadequate history education. As the title says, … Continue reading “What We’re Reading: Western Culture, Groupthink, and Queer Criminology”
People who analyze and write about higher education generally fall into two camps. One camp consists of those who believe that our system is “the envy of the world” and … Continue reading “Can American Higher Education Be Restored?”
Public universities in North Carolina can’t fund their athletic budgets from only ticket and merchandise sales; they must use subsidies to foot the rest of the bill. Sometimes the extra … Continue reading “Did You Know? For UNC System Sports, Students Must Foot the Bill”
It is increasingly apparent that college basketball serves as an unofficial minor league for the National Basketball Association (NBA) rather than as an extracurricular activity for students. And it is … Continue reading “How Colleges Could Benefit from an NBA Rule Change”
Kentuckians were forced to consider potential problems with intercollegiate athletics when both the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky were implicated in the recent FBI probe into possibly … Continue reading “Gaming the System: How Kentucky Spends Funding for Students on Athletics”
Remember the huge University of North Carolina athletics scandal, whereby the university’s athletics department managed to arrange for star football and basketball players to get preferential treatment to such an … Continue reading “How Does a University Advance an ‘Athlete-friendly’ Curriculum?”
Over Thanksgiving break, when most students headed home for the holiday to catch up on sleep and maybe some homework, NC State’s basketball team traveled to the Bahamas. They were … Continue reading “Athletic Travel and Practice Requirements Are Overwhelming Students”
If a university ignores potential conflicts of interests between athletics and academics, it imperils itself. Athletics departments that lack academic oversight signal misplaced priorities and pose a risk of becoming … Continue reading “Athletics Department Oversight of Academics: A Scandal Waiting to Happen”