Congratulations North Carolina Tar Heels
2005 NCAA Men's Tournament Champions!!!
In other news, pope dies.
2005 NCAA Men's Tournament Champions!!!
In other news, pope dies.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:19 AM
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
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17 Comments:
With a 67% graduation rate.
http://www.ncaa.org/grad_rates/2004/d1/schools/RPT00457.html
That's better than most of the schools in the tournament this year - only 23 of the 65 teams had rates higher than 50%. Two schools in the tournament, Minnesota and LSU, had 0% graduation on their teams in the past several years.
Interestingly, the graduation rate of black UNC players (83%) is higher than that of their white teammates (33%).
That's a 75% graduation rate, dumbass. The chart isn't really that difficult to read... Perhaps you weren't looking at the hoops portion...
And, um, 75% is a pretty good graduation rate even for non-athletes.
I'm no defender of big-time college sports, but anybody with half a brain knows that UNC is on the forefront of making the system work and making it better.
Leaving you, Anonymous, in the other category.
And, incidentally, if you're really interested in more representative numbers, you might want to reflect on Dean's 96% graduation rate:
http://tarheelblue.collegesports.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/unc-m-baskbl-dean-smith.html
Do all philosophers have esses in their names? Who are these Tarheels I've been hearing about, and what did they do that's so worthy of comment? Perhaps they won a university debate competition? That might explain the high graduation rate.
-- mac in seattle
Winston, it is 67% for the four-year average. The 75% is those who were freshmen in '97-98. You're right, the chart isn't that hard to read. Perhaps philosophers shouldn't deal in numbers.
A,
You might want to actually check the actual numbers, which I've thoughtfully provided for you in the next post.
Furthermore, the chart seems to include non-lettermen, which is a different category.
But, hey, it's all a little confusing I guess. I suggest paying closer attention.
Winston, the graduation figures as reported by the NCAA do not include separate categories for lettermen and non-letterman. They do include separate categories for race, and also separate categories for transfer students, the freshman cohort of '97-'98, and a four-year floating average.
The four-year average is the one that is most statistically reliable and is the one generally reported in the media. For UNC, that average this year is 67%.
If UNC has a habit of defining "student athlete" differently than the NCAA does so as to pad their graduation figures, that is news to me, and it is disappointing since their straight numbers are already better than most schools. (Though lower than what the sainted Coach Smith achieved.)
Um, not sure what's so difficult about this, but let's try it again, making the obvious explicit:
No, a 4-year average isn't the most "reliable"/informative number. The most reliable/informative numbers will be the longer-term averages. There might be special cases in which that's not true, of course.
Though in this case, obviously the years you obsess over here are the *least* representative ones, so it's puzzling that you'd focus on them. Everyone knows what happened during the Dougherty debacle.
Furthermore, I'm not sure where the suggestion comes from the UNC fiddles with the relevant definitions. Perhaps you are worried about drawing distinctions b/w lettermen and non-lettermen, but it's obvious why that distinction matters here.
So I'm baffled.
In case you are, as you seem to be, trying to kill my buzz today, I guess I should point out that it isn't working. Good objections might have done so--but lucky me!
Go Tar Heels, 2005 NCAA Champs!
And, more importantly, to putting academics first.
I'm not trying to kill your buzz. I pointed out at the beginning of this thread that UNC's 67% graduation rate is a lot better than most schools in the tournament. I am just informing you that the rate at UNC is indeed 67%, not 75, or 96, or any other number. This figure is accepted by the NCAA, the sports media, the general media, and basically the entire world, except for one curmudgeonly philosophy professor, apparently.
The idea of using a longer average than the four year average used by the NCAA has one obvious flaw: using a longer average means including older data in the mix. Since the most recent cohort for which data is available is the '97-'98 cohort, using a four-year floating average means that we have to look at cohorts going back to '94-'95; i.e. people who entered school a decade ago. It can fairly be asked whether that data is already too old to be relevant, particularly for schools that have had coaching changes in the interim. Going back even farther is hard to justify.
Gosh, I just don't think this is going anywhere.
One can carefully (and fallaciously) choose one's starting and stopping points when collecting data. (um, maybe __________ (fill in blank)s shouldn't be trusted with numbers...) Noting that there was a downward trend in something or other starting on Monday, and that the thing in question started trending back up on Friday, I can choose those as my endpoints in order to bolster my case that things aren't going well. But that's, well, the fallacy of arbitrary starting and stopping points.
Rail all you want and deny the facts if you like--why should I care? The data's there for those willing to be objective.
I've not--nobody has--ever claimed that *every single way* of slicing up the graduation data at UNC will yield a happy picture--only that the most important way of doing so will. Of course there are ALWAYS advantages to looking only at more recent data rather than more data--and there are always disadvantages too, which usually--as in this case--outweigh the advantages.
The tumultuous last few years did lots of bad things to the program, and those bad things particularly affected the penumbra of walk-on players that surround the core of the program.
If you want to obsess about some of the data from that brief and highly unusual period to the exclusion of focusing on the sustained record of the last 35 years--and to the exclusion of any of the demonstrable virtues of the program--then be my guest--it seems to give you happiness for some reason.
But don't ask me to get upset about one slice of short-term and massively unrepresentative data.
Let me make it clear--I'm not supporter of big-time college sports in general. I think they suck. I've said before that if I could push a button and get rid of 'em I probably would. But given that that's not going to happen, the only option is to make the best of the system. And Dean and UNC seem to have done that. When I arrived at UNC I was the biggest opponent of college sports you ever saw. But the demonstrable virtues of Dean's basketball program soon won me over.
Actually, that was too cranky and condescending, A. My apologies.
I don't agree with your point, though, and, must admit an irritation at finding myself discussing this point now. So, recognizing that I'm too stoked about the championship to be dispassionate about this issue right now, I'm just going to go back to walking around and whistling "One Shining Moment" and the Carolina fight song.
I'll think about this some other day, but, you know, it's like you are asking me to contemplate the patriarchal history of marriage on my wedding day or something...
So please excuse my crankiness and dismissiveness!
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