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Report: Berkeley drops ball on athlete graduation rate

Byuclafaculty

From the San Jose Mercury-News:

The No. 1 public university in the country has the least success graduating players among the 72 teams in the major football-playing conferences, according to NCAA data released Thursday. Just 44 percent of Cal’s football players graduated within the parameters established by the NCAA. For comparison, archrival Stanford is among the national leaders at 93 percent; state school neighbor San Jose State checked in at 51 percent.  Nor is football the only Cal team struggling to graduate players. While many sports are performing well, men’s basketball posted a Graduation Success Rate of 38 percent — the fourth-lowest among teams in the major conferences…

Full story at http://www.mercurynews.com/sports/ci_24383075/cal-football-team-struggling-classroom-too

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Are some administrators shivering?

Byuclafaculty

No, not because of the cold weather in other parts of the country.  Rather, because of the headline regarding Northwestern University’s football program in today’s Inside Higher Ed:  Athletes Move to Unionize The Internet – or at least, the piece of the Internet where people pay moderate attention to college sports – blew up Tuesday afternoon with the news that some number of Northwestern University football players are seeking to unionize.  The apparently unprecedented step is a potential watershed moment for athletes in commercial sports programs like those at Northwestern, who were lauded by outspoken critics and sports columnists who…

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USC Has a Bad Patch

Byuclafaculty

We posted yesterday about the news from UC-Berkeley that many earthquake-prone buildings are located in southern California – including in Westwood.  The Westwood-Century City Patch, in picking up the story from the LA Times, blamed USC instead of UC-B, at least in the headline.  See above.  Probably just as well.  Who wants to be the bearer of bad tidings?.

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UC-Berkeley Releases Its Earthquake Survey to the LA Times

Byuclafaculty

We have followed the LA Times‘ story of the concern about certain concrete buildings in the southern California area which might be at risk in a major earthquake.  The Times identified some buildings in an earlier story but noted that UC-Berkeley had a survey list of buildings.  Berkeley was reluctant to provide the list because its intent was to get an estimate of the number of such buildings based on public records rather than evaluate each building directly.  It has now provided the Times with the list, along with a legal disclaimer.  The Times now has an interactive map on…

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Quake Response

Byuclafaculty

We noted in a prior post there would be increased attention to earthquake risks in LA around the 20th anniversary of the Jan. 27, 1994 Northridge quake.  One item that began to develop was an LA Times article indicating that various buildings were at risk in the LA area, even though they were thought safe when constructed.  One of the buildings in Westwood is owned by UCLA, which asserted that it had been upgraded.  It was also reported that a team of researchers at Berkeley had compiled a list of such buildings, but was not making the list available due…

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Is the ball still in their court or has the train left the station?

Byuclafaculty

Hey! Let’s rebuild the old stadium! Sorry to mix metaphors.  But Inside Higher Ed today has a long story on Berkeley athletics which have recently been in the news for low graduation rates and problems in funding a stadium upgrade.  A white paper from the Berkeley Center for the Study of Higher Education suggests that the program is running as an autonomous and relatively uncontrolled business operation. It is written by a former vice chancellor – who can now tell all -and a Berkeley grad student. See http://cshe.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/shared/publications/docs/ROPS.CSHE_.12.13.Cummins%26Hextrum.CalAthletics.1.6.2014.pdf and http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/08/highlighting-berkeley-paper-explores-academic-damage-expanding-independent-athletics The issue is whether control can be retaken or whether…

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Q&A

Byuclafaculty

The Contra Costa Times ran an interview with UC president Napolitano that was published yesterday.  But apparently the interview occurred in late 2013.  Here are the questions:Q: One of your first proposals was to make tuition rates more predictable. What might that look like? Q: At the last UC regents meeting, Gov. Jerry Brown said UC had slim chances of securing additional state funding, with all of the competing needs in Sacramento. What did you make of that? Q: Were you surprised by the low graduation rates for some student-athletes at Cal? (UC Berkeley’s football team had the lowest graduation…