COIA/Curley Center survey: Best practices for academic integrity often not used

(Originally published 9/1/11)

This week the Journal of Intercollegiate Sport published two articles by the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism--the product of several years of work by Prof. Emeritus, John S. Nichols, Dean Marie Hardin, and myself. The first article, a national survey of Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) schools, was produced in collaboration with the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics. The survey received coverage from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

According to a national survey conducted by the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics and researchers at Penn State University, only a minority of faculty governance bodies on campuses with elite sports programs have direct oversight of athlete admissions, scholarships, and advising. And few faculty governance leaders look at the majors and courses that athletes take.

As lead author John S. Nichols told the Chronicle:

To the extent that data on initial eligibility, special admits, scholarship termination, scholarship runoffs–problems that are academic in nature–are being done without oversight of the faculty, these festering problems are only going to get worse.

A second article provides detailed case studies of the six highest scoring schools on the survey--University of Houston, University of Illinois, University of Maryland, Oklahoma State University, University of South Carolina, and Southern Methodist University. As an article about the research on Penn State Live explained:

The Penn State researchers . . . found that all six have established structures for faculty oversight of intercollegiate athletics.

 At several of the schools, top faculty leaders were directly involved with the campus athletics board, which has regulatory authority over academic standards in the athletics program at most universities. Those interviewed for case studies at the six universities stressed, in particular, the importance of having oversight committees to regularly evaluate the admissions standards and academic progress of student-athletes.

“COIA’s best practices are not a recipe for automatic success,” said Thomas F. Corrigan, lead Penn State researcher for the case studies. “But the six schools that we studied do have established mechanisms for greater transparency and accountability in their athletic programs.”

PDFs for the two articles can be downloaded from the Curley Center site: survey & case studies