Michigan athletics is a diploma mill part deux

Just shouting-out to the second day of The Ann Arbor News' expose of UM's "student-athletes" and the hoops the University jumps through to keep them eligible. Today the topic is easy majors. When the NCAA toughened its' requirements,  the "Kinesiology" major, which is sports management and exercise science, and actually rather difficult if you're not given a free pass, became too hard for many UM football players. Now they take "General Studies," which means...what? You tell me.

I think I had one teammate at Wisconsin who was a Kinesiology major. He ended up going to Medical School. I don't know anyone who got a BA in General Studies. Then again, many of Michigan's athletes don't even graduate, so does their major even matter except for them to announce it on TV?

Money excerpt:

With the fall term drawing to a close, Jay Basten monitored students taking his final exam in Sport Management 111, a course at the University of Michigan.

During the essay test last December, one undergraduate - an athlete - caught Basten's attention.

"I could tell by the look on his face, and also based on the work he had done previously in class, that he had no clue what to write," Basten said. "It was a 50-minute exam, and he probably wrote three sentences."

Basten said the experience almost brought tears to his eyes. But the full-time kinesiology lecturer added that watching a Michigan student-athlete struggle is not an isolated occurrence.

"As far as the university's history, it's not all good," he said. "There have been people who have worked to do the right thing, but more often than not, athletic talent has won out over academic ability."

Basten worked in Michigan's admissions office before becoming a faculty member, and he said he knows about the compromises made when admitting some athletes. He said he's seen a previous school president get involved in the process.

Basten also helped spawn recent changes to toughen kinesiology's sport management major.

That, in turn, caused many athletes to shift their educational track into a relatively unstructured degree program called general studies.

Asked if Michigan could offer its student-athletes an academic experience similar to that of a typical student and still compete at the highest levels athletically, Basten didn't hesitate.

"No," he said.

 

So, anyone want to explain that whole tax-exempt thing again?