UNC-Chapel Hill is failing to educate its black athletes

The NCAA released new graduation data in November, and there’s an undeniable conclusion – UNC-Chapel Hill is still failing to educate its black athletes.

The 2011 freshman class raised UNC’s overall four-class average federal graduation rate to 91 percent. But new data reveal that the same calculation for black male athletes fell to 42 percent – a rate 49 percentage points lower than the student body. This graduation gap has grown for a decade; the 2001 freshman class saw a 56 percent four-class rate for black athletes and an 83 percent rate for all students.

UNC’s decline for black male athletes is also evident in adjusted graduation metrics. The NCAA advertises its homemade “Graduation Success Rate,” which removes players who transfer or go pro from the calculations (though many outgoing transfers never graduate, and some players who leave for the pros aren’t drafted). But even with the statistical deck stacked in its favor, the 2011 cohort’s 54 percent GSR for black male athletes dropped 13 percentage points from the 2001 rate of 67 percent. Using either set of metrics, there is a black athlete graduation crisis in Chapel Hill.

This graduation crisis represents a betrayal of UNC’s black athletes, who predominate in the school’s lucrative men’s basketball and football teams. Under the NCAA’s “amateurism” rules, the athletes get not one penny of salary from the athletic department’s near $100 million revenue.

Former head football coach Larry Fedora will earn $12 million not to coach the Tar Heels. Apart from a paltry cost-of-attendance stipend, education is the NCAA athlete’s only compensation for years of labor, long hours (approximately 40 hours a week on sports), and sometimes abuse. But almost 60 percent of Carolina’s black male athletes quietly leave with no UNC degree and little more than injuries and memories.

Chapel Hill’s crisis isn’t the only one, but it’s among the worst. UNC’s 2011 black male athlete FGR is dead last among four-class FGRs at official peer institutions. Duke’s black male athlete FGR? It was 82 percent, even with the one-and-done basketball players.

The graduation gap has several causes, but for many revenue athletes, the problem is worse because their athletic identity dwarfs their academic self-identity.

This suppression of academic identity is encouraged by a power structure where millionaire coaches and cultural pressures convince 18- to 22-year-olds to neglect their studies to pour more hours into their athletic pursuits. Those who neglect their studies often perform better on the field and earn their coaches’ favor – both of which are key to playing professionally. School doesn’t matter so long as they meet the NCAA’s continuing academic eligibility standards, which are inadequate.

While athletes can’t compete if they don’t “progress” towards their degree, they only must complete 20 percent of their degree requirements per year to play. But after a player steps on the field for the first time, they only have four years to play – and only four years on scholarship. Do the math. It doesn’t add up for athletes who neglect academics for dreams of professional sports. Only 1.2 percent of men’s college basketball players make it to the NBA and only 1.6 percent of college football players make it to the NFL.

UNC could help its athletes develop an academic identity and improve classroom motivation by moving towards a career interest-driven academic support model. At Vanderbilt, where I played football, this approach has anchored an 85 percent four-class FGR for black male athletes.

One unique feature of Vanderbilt’s success is a summer internship program for athletes. Athletes are placed part-time with a local organization based on their career interests, working unpaid for 12 weeks while the university houses and feeds them. Athletes with pressing academic requirements hold six-week internships and attend classes the other six weeks of the summer.

The athletes gain work experience that their schedules otherwise don’t allow. But most importantly, athletes discover passions and clarify career interests which are then integrated into their academic support plan, helping them to develop an academic identity. This ultimately lends a greater sense of purpose – one beyond staying eligible – to the years of coursework required to graduate.

The data demand that UNC urgently seek solutions to its graduation woes, and an inclusive internship program is an attractive option given Chapel Hill’s proximity to major employers in the Triangle. Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham and Dr. Michelle Brown of UNC’s Academic Support Program for Student Athletes owe it to their black athletes to consider such a program to foster academic identity and success.

This story was originally published November 30, 2018 at 2:51 PM.