University of Georgia Athletic Graduation Rates Appallingly Low

By Mark Hoerrner

Despite the University of Georgia’s outstanding performance in football this year, the team’s academic performance puts them dead last among the 12 schools in the Southeastern Conference, figures recently released by the National Collegiate Athletic Association reveal. The statistics indicate that of the approximately 100 players on the UGA football roster, nearly 60 percent won’t graduate within six years of their freshman entry to college.

"I am extremely disappointed," UGA Athletics Director Damon Evans told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "We will get better. Our primary focus is to graduate young people. It is an institution of higher learning so we have got to graduate our kids."

But UGA football didn’t have the worst story to be told. The NCAA study listed grad rates for basketball as well. The NCAA studied freshman who entered college during 1996-1999 and would have graduated by 2005. Of the 318 Divison I schools, UGA was next to last with only nine percent of men’s basketball players graduating during the study period. Only the University of New Mexico had a worse record with just seven percent of its men’s basketball players receiving a degree.

UGA Men’s Basketball Head Coach Dennis Felton was dismayed by the findings but pointed out that none of the players were recruited under his tenure with the school.

"I am glad that I have the chance to comment on this because I believe things are very different now," Felton told reporters from the AJC. "Things have definitely improved. It's my philosophy to work hard to do everything you can to make sure these young men develop and grow and have successful futures. A big part of that is for them to earn their college degree."

Evans indicated that the school was doing everything possible to improve graduation rates but that progress in that area will take some time.

"I liken it to in some cases when you are trying to turn a battleship in the ocean," Evans said in the AJC. "It just doesn't swing around in the blip of a second. This is something you have got to work toward."

When looking at women’s statistics, the numbers are much better. Seventy-five percent of UGA’s female basketball players graduated within the time allotted by the NCAA study.

Since his appointment in 2004, Evans has worked to improve academic performance among UGA athletes. He makes it a point of meeting with each individual athlete whose GPA drops to 2.0 or less, the AJC reported, and even had bonus provisions put in the contracts of UGA coaches who are able to keep their athletes in the top third of the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate indicators.

UGA Provost Arnett Mace said that there were already signs of progress from Evans administration.

"We did not have any member of the football team that was academically ineligible this year," he told the AJC.