PHILADELPHIA ― Young Black men playing basketball and football for the country’s top college teams are graduating at lower rates than Black male students at the same schools ― despite having financial and academic support that removes common hurdles preventing many undergraduates from earning a degree, a new report has found.
While 58 percent of Black male undergraduates at the 65 schools in the Power 5 conferences got degrees within six years, 54 percent of Black male student-athletes at the same schools graduated, according to an analysis of the 2014-2015 academic year by University of Pennsylvania researcher Shaun Harper.
Harper said the graduation gap represents a wide, systemic issue worse than isolated scandals seen on individual campuses.
“It happens just about everywhere,” said Harper, director of Penn’s Center for Race and Equity in Education. “Generations of young Black men and their parents and families are repeatedly duped by a system that lies to them about what their life chances are and what their athletic outcomes are likely to be.”
Just as the attention of the sports world shifts to March Madness, the home page for the NCAA’s website features data on how few student-athletes are drafted to play professional sports, promoting its efforts to educate college players. The NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments begin this week.
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida also published a study this week on graduation rates for Black men’s basketball players at NCAA Tournament schools. The 68 teams this year had a graduation rate for Black athletes of 75 percent, compared with 69 percent for the teams last year. The same schools had graduation rates of 93 percent for White men each year, the study said.
Richard Lapchick, the institute’s director, told The Associated Press that problems with K-12 education are part of the disparity between Black and White athletes.
