Showing posts with label Collage Graduation Rates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Collage Graduation Rates. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

First Lady Notes Personal Struggles In Chicago Graduation

Christian K. Lee / AP
By Sophia Tareen, Jun. 9, 2015, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama drew on her hometown connections and personal struggles from college and the White House Tuesday during a Chicago high school graduation speech to the classmates of an honor student gunned down in 2013 near the Obama family home.

A boisterous crowd of thousands attended the commencement ceremony for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Preparatory High School, a school that garnered headlines when teenager Hadiya Pendleton was fatally shot on the way home from class. Days earlier she had been in Washington, D.C., to perform with her drill team during President Barack Obama's second term inauguration festivities.

Pendleton would have graduated Tuesday. A chair — draped in purple fabric, her favorite color; a feather boa; and a bouquet of flowers — was reserved in her honor among her cap-and-gown-clad classmates. Her family was presented with an engraved class ring.



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Wednesday, April 9, 2014

By Libby Nelson, Apr. 7, 2014, Vox.com

The University of Connecticut Huskies made a triumphant return to the NCAA tournament this year — winning the national championship Monday night — after the school was barred from competition in 2013 for poor academic performance.

But UConn's graduation rate for male basketball players is still the worst of any team in the 2014 tournament.

UConn graduates 8 percent of its players, according to the most recent NCAA statistics. To put it another way: of the 12 players who started as freshmen eight years ago, exactly one managed to finish a college degree or leave UConn in good academic standing.

UConn's terrible graduation rate is an outlier for the tournament



Read the full story:  www.vox.com


Related:  The Elder Statement:  Kentucky Wildcats Coach Makes $5 Million -- What About the Players Who Make It Possible? - By Larry Elder


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By Larry Elder, Apr. 9, 2014 

Yes, it “opens up a can of worms” if colleges started paying the student-athletes who put fannies in the seat.

Questions include: How would it work? How much would they be paid? What about risk of injury and issues of liability?

Legitimate questions.

But there is something fundamentally wrong when the losing Kentucky Wildcats basketball coach earns over $5 million and the players violate NCAA rules if they accept a free meal from a fan. Maybe the end result is that some schools will drop programs if they find these questions to thorny to resolve. Not a bad outcome. That there are far more questions than answers doesn’t mean we can’t figure out something.



Shabazz Napier, the most valuable player on the winning men’s UConn team, said in a postgame interview: “We do have hungry nights that we don't have enough money to get food in. Sometimes money is needed. I don't think you should stretch it out to hundreds of thousands of dollars for playing, because a lot of times guys don't know how to handle themselves with money. I feel like a student athlete. Sometimes, there's hungry nights where I'm not able to eat, but I still gotta play up to my capabilities.”


Leave aside the claim that UConn allegedly plays its games with starving players. After all, student-athletes in elite programs like that of UConn usually have access of unlimited amounts of food. But Napier’s point deserves consideration.

UConn clearly recruits some “student athletes” knowing full well most will not graduate. The graduation rate for UConn’s male basketball program, for those entering between 2003 and 2006, was 8 percent. Meanwhile UConn’s winning female basketball team graduates 92 percent of its players.

Something is wrong. Very wrong.





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