That standard is academic achievement.
According to the report Keeping Score When It Counts: Graduation Rates for 2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament Teams, released March 17th by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida, the Hilltoppers boast a 100% graduation success among student athletes in the basketball program over six years.
The rest of the "academic final four" would be Butler at 92%, with Notre Dame and Purdue tied at 91%.
Most of the tournament's top seeds didn't fare nearly as well in the study.
- University of North Carolina: 86%
- Memphis: 40%
- Kansas: 45%
- UCLA: 40%
Graduation Rates and Race
The main focus of the TIDES report is not graduation rates as a whole, but rather the disparity in rate between white and African-American athletes. The report's author, Dr. Richard Lapchick, notes that:...the on-going and significant disparity regarding the academic success between African-American and white men's basketball student-athletes is deeply troubling. Higher education's greatest failure is the persistent gap between African-American and white basketball student-athletes in particular and students in general. The good news is that the gaps are narrowing slightly.According to the study, 61% (33 schools) of the tournament teams in the study graduated 70% of white basketball student-athletes, while only 30% could say the same for the African-American players. That's a 31% gap -- clearly, less than ideal -- but an improvement from last year's study, which showed a 38% disparity.
The overall graduation rate for the African-American student-athletes ws 53%, as compared with 77% for white.
