Just the Stats: The Graduation Success Rates of The Final Four

Each of the Final Four men’s basketball teams competing this weekend for the NCAA championship has a 100 percent graduation rate — but only for their White players. The news is not so good for Black players.

Overall, 35 of the 64 teams in this year’s men’s basketball tournament did not graduate at least half of their players, according to “Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2006 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament Teams,” a report by Dr. Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.

In 2006, 69 percent of all student-athletes graduated within six years, compared to 58 percent of basketball student-athletes. More alarming is the gap in graduation rates between Black and White men’s basketball players. Blacks dominate the courts, making up 60.7 percent of all Division I players. And yet, only 49 percent of Black players graduate, compared to 76 percent of Whites.

This year’s Final Four had varying Graduation Success Rates in 2006. According to the NCAA, “the GSR measures graduation rates at Division I institutions and includes students transferring into the institutions, allowing institutions to subtract student-athletes who leave their institutions prior to graduation as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they remained.” 

Here are the six-year graduation success rates for the four schools still competing for the national championship. This tells what percentage of student-athletes who entered school in 2000 had graduated by 2006.

–Olivia Majesky-Pullmann

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