
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 9, 1993                   TAG: 9307090359
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MORE THAN BRAWN REQUIRED OF ATHLETES

BILL Brill's June 6 column ("Virginia Tech gets an `F' in graduation-rate study") dealt with the problem of why so few of Tech's athletes graduate within a period of four to six years of starting. He reported that over several years, and by several measures, Tech ranked either at or near the bottom. Texas A&M was also near the bottom on all of these. Here we have two famous universities with an inability to graduate their student athletes. Why?

I graduated from Tech in 1988. When I was in the service in Texas, I investigated A&M as a possible school. One point the two schools have in common is that both are land-grant colleges with very detailed graduation requirements. In the early '80s, Tech's bulletin took three times as much space to describe graduation requirements for a bachelor's degree in a social science as did the University of Texas at Austin. A major in chemical engineering required four years plus a summer term. During those 13 academic quarters, the student was allowed one technical elective course and a choice of foreign language. Everything else was set out beforehand. A&M was similar. Engineering and accounting were the worst in this regard, but less rigid disciplines still demanded a large number of required subjects.

Given this, it is easy to need a fifth year. Fail or miss a course, and you have to take it next year. And courses that require it will have to be postponed. This is hard on athletes who must take courses to retain funding, while other courses are required to graduate. If football practice is at 4 p.m. and a required lab is 3-5 p.m., the lab has to be postponed.

It gets worse. The National Collegiate Athletic Association requires athletes to maintain a certain average in core subjects, while Tech only requires a passing grade. If a regular student accumulates D's in English and A's in his major, then he can graduate. But the athlete may need to take English electives to retain eligibility and postpone major subjects - and thus graduation.

To a degree, Brill and other critics are right to criticize Tech's athletic program. From what I have seen and from the comparable experience of A&M, it seems that part of the problem is that the academic program, for good reasons, differs from that at most colleges. The attempt to fit this sort of program with athletic programs with very different academic surroundings is the deeper cause. JACK R. PATTERSON ROANOKE

by CNB