National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I African American women basketball players academically outperformed their male African American counterparts and had a smaller gap with their White teammates in 2020, says the annual report by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES).
With no NCAA Men’s and Women’s Division I Basketball Tournaments held this spring, TIDES based its annual reports on projections for the men’s and women’s tournament entries. “Keeping Score When It Counts: Academic Progress/Graduation Success Rate” studies were published this week.
The studies showed that African American women basketball players narrowed the gap in graduation success rate (GSR) vis-à-vis their White peers in 2020, but male African American basketball players saw that gap widening in the same period.
The overall men’s basketball student-athlete GSR increased from 81.2% in 2019 to 82.8% this year and both African American and White student-athletes showed an increase — African Americans from 79% in 2019 to 80% in 2020 and Whites from 91.6% to 94.3% in 2020. However, the gap between African American and White student-athletes grew from 12.6% in 2019 to 14.3% in 2020.
By contrast, the women’s teams outperformed the men across the board with an overall GSR increase from 92% in 2019 to 93% in 2020. The GSR for African American players rose from 88.3% to 89.6% and White players rose from 95.7% to 95.9%. Therefore, the gap between the two groups narrowed, from 7.4% in 2019 to 6.3% in 2020.
“One of the natures of being an athlete is being competitive,” said Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of TIDES. “One of the reasons we do this is so schools will find themselves being competitive [academically]. That the men’s teams say, ‘We want be at least equal to the women in the classroom.’ We want to provide that type of incentive.”
While the gap for the men increased this year after decreasing the previous three years,
