Graduation rates for athletes competing in the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament rose significantly over last year, and gaps along racial lines narrowed slightly, but not nearly enough to declare a victory over disparities in academics.
That was the heart of the message that a leading collegiate sports scholar delivered Thursday during what has become a pre-March Madness routine for the annual release of a report meant to call attention issues of academic equity.
Dr. Richard Lapchick, founder and director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics In Sport, or TIDES, at the University of Central Florida, said the “good news” from his new report — titled Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Success and Academic Progress Rates for the 2013 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament Teams — is that the overall Graduation Success Rate, or GSR, for male basketball student-athletes increased in 2013 to 70 percent from 67 percent last year.
At a more demographically detailed level, the report found, the GSR for African-American male basketball student-athletes rose from 59 to 65 percent from 2012 to 2013, and for White male basketball student-athletes, the GSR increased slightly from 88 percent to 90 percent, respectively.
“While all that sounds good, it still leaves the enormous gap between White and African-American basketball players,” Lapchick said of the 25 percent gap that exists between the GSR for White and African-American student-athletes on the tournament teams.
Though the gap is three percent lower than it was last year at 28 percent, “that’s still a huge issue,” Lapchick said.
He lamented other statistics in the report.
