[NU Sports] Minny's graduation rate compared with Northwestern

[Louie Vaccher]

You bring up a good point but I think those numbers may be a little
misleading.

If I'm not mistaken, Minnesota is a large, public school with a lot of
commuting and part-time students, and students that spend a short time there
and then move on. So, I'm guessing that their student body graduation rate
is falsely low, and it would be much higher for students that stay four or
five years.

A better comparison would be to measure the graduation rate of all students
who stay at Minny for four or five years against the student-athletes that
stay four or five years. I'll bet that the graduation rate for athletes
(which would probably be pretty close to that 58% number) would be lower
than the student body's as a whole in that case.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff Beamsley" <jeffb at hilgraeve.com>
To: "NU Sports list" <nwu-sports at romaine.tssi.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2004 10:53 AM
Subject: [NU Sports] Minny's graduation rate compared with Northwestern


> There is a lot of press today saying how bad Minny's athletic situation
> is because they are last in the BT in athletic graduation rate (58%),
> but that is six points BETTER than the graduation rate for the whole
> institution (52%).  Now this isn't something to brag about, but in
> general the athletic department is doing a better job than the
> institution in graduating people.
>
> In comparison, Northwestern graduated 87% of it's athletes (on average),
> but the institution graduated 92%.  So the athletic department did five
> points WORSE than the whole institution.  When you dig into the numbers,
> it was the basketball team that appeared to have some problems (did our
> euro imports graduate?).
>
> Seems to me that you shouldn't hold an any athletic department to a
> higher standard than the whole institution and you should celebrate
> those athletic departments that do a better job than the institution
> itself.   Those athletic departments with positive numbers are
> demonstrating their commitment to education.
>
> If you reorg the list based on difference between the athletic
> department and the institutional graduation rates it looks a little
> different.
>
> Minny +6
> Purdue +6
> OSU +5
> Iowa +5
> PSU -1
> MSU -2
> NU - 5
> Indiana -5
> Wisky -5
> Illinois -9
> UoM -10
>
> Jeff
>
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