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News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education

March 17

A Bracket Not to Bet On

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Given that Inside Higher Ed is just three years old, we haven’t established too many formal traditions so far. But around this time in each of the last two years, in our own twist on March Madness, we have adopted an out-of-the-box method of assessing the outcome of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I men’s basketball tournament, which begins this week.

Befitting a Web site that focuses on higher education, and looks at college sports through the prism of how they fit into the larger picture of academic life, our NCAA bracket gives the edge in each game matchup to the team with the strongest academic performance. In past years, we’ve based our bracket on the teams’ graduation rates, which has traditionally been the best (in part because it was really the only) nationally comparable way of measuring how athletes fared in the classroom.

This year, however, we’re taking a slightly different tack, basing teams’ pathway through the Inside Higher Ed Academic Performance Tournament (or APT) on the latest Academic Progress Rates for each team. The Academic Progress Rate is the NCAA’s relatively new tool for assessing the real-time performance of teams and colleges, and it gives teams points for the extent to which their athletes stay in good academic standing and remain enrolled from term to term. (The NCAA uses the rate to reward and punish strong and poor performers, and it will begin imposing penalties this spring based on teams’ outcomes.) We use the NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate as the tiebreaker.

As in past years, we would not recommend that any of you use this bracket to make your selections in any office pools that you choose to enter (not that any of you would gamble, since illegal wagering is, well, illegal). After all, in the last two years, Bucknell University and College of the Holy Cross, both of the Patriot League, have won our brackets, and while Bucknell won its first-round game in 2006, Holy Cross lost in its first-round matchup in 2007.

Still, if you think college athletes should be students and want to know which teams, by the NCAA’s own measure of choice, fare best academically, the Inside Higher Ed bracket is the one for you.

Some of the highlights of our tournament: The first round game between Georgetown and the University of Maryland Baltimore County is a tight one, and Belmont and Brigham Young go to the tiebreaker in the Elite Eight. Our Final Four looks a wee bit different from most of the experts’, but let’s just say that one of the No. 1 seeds makes it into our Final Four. The full bracket, and the winner, can be found here.

On with the games.

— Doug Lederman

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Comments

A better predictor of success...

find the bottom 10 teams by any measure academic excellence you wish to use. The tournement winner will be among that group. Lets not let a little thing like being a student stand in the way of a winning college record.

R.F., at 8:05 am EDT on March 17, 2008

I wonder what the chart would look like if we used institutional NSSE data instead of team graduation rates, which can often be “adjusted".

Jason, Graduate Student at University of Virginia, at 8:15 am EDT on March 17, 2008

Inverse Bracket?

For comparison, IHE should post the bracket with the *lower* team moving forward. It then would be interesting to compare this ranking to the actual result, as well as to the IHE Bracket. Let’s see that inverse bracket!

fecalito, at 10:00 am EDT on March 17, 2008

I couldn’t resist

I went ahead and used the bracket as my entry for the office pool (don’t worry, the prize is your name on a plaque). it’ll be interesting to see how it does.

@R.F. Did you even look at the bracket? There is one team there that got to the final four academically and has a real chance to win it for real this year.

Kyle Johnson, at 10:00 am EDT on March 17, 2008

Go Tarheels!

UNC — Always a class act! And it would be really cool to see Davidson win it all in the real world! Good job on the Bracket!

March Madness Man, at 11:15 am EDT on March 17, 2008

Although it’s troubling that many colleges put sports above academics, here’s another problem: students who attend schools just because they have prominent sports programs. For example, we know that Gonzaga and George Mason increased their enrollments after their basketball teams received publicity. However, students need to be encouraged to pick schools based on academics, and even more importantly, costs, rather than sports prominence...

Author, No Sucker Left Behind, at 11:15 am EDT on March 17, 2008

GO HEELS!

Todd, at 11:15 am EDT on March 17, 2008

Doug,

Would that it were about the education of mind and body....always a joy reading IHE.

TR, at 2:45 pm EDT on March 17, 2008

graduation

All five of the Oregon Ducks’ seniors, including three starters, had graduated by the end of last semester.

Most of the hyped players (e.g. Kevin Love at UCLA) will be gone to the NBA either at the end of this season or next.

Many of these guys are just passing through.

jamison, at 3:20 pm EDT on March 17, 2008

Brackets for Women’s Teams?

I am hoping that you will provide similar brackets for the women’s tourament.

Barbara

Barbara Hetrick, senior vice president at council of independent colleges, at 4:35 pm EDT on March 18, 2008

Go Cats!

As a Davidson alum, I must admit that I love any bracket that puts Davidson in the winning position. I know we won’t likely be there in the basketball tournament, but it’s always great to see that Davidson’s strong academic programs, especially for athletes, getting recognition.

Also, I think it says a lot about UNC that they get that far with a #1 seed team.

Davidson Fan, at 3:10 pm EDT on March 20, 2008

The bracket is 4/4 for the sweet 16 teams in the Midwest region. In fact, it has only missed 3 games in the Midwest region so far: Vanderbilt/Siena, UMBC/Georgetown, and UNLV/Kent State.

Tim, at 5:10 am EDT on March 24, 2008

My Wish

I would like to thank you and your school’s basketball group for showing all of us, not just my family, my town (which bleeds basketball orange), but all of us for showing us, no matter what the big obsticle, how tall the mountian, or how deep the river that we can overcome!

I simply want to wish you guys the best in the Sweet 16 and thank you for all the lessons learned over this past weekend! Your team has taught us more than they will ever know!!

Johnny, Indiana Basketball Bleeder, at 10:10 am EDT on March 24, 2008

THANKS!

Thank you for having made information available by e-mail. We went to “Search” to find where Davidson is located. Apparently the sports announcers don’t know, either, because we’ve never heard the location from them, even though we’ve listened intently for it.

We are impressed with your emphasis on the main reason for a college’s existence.

We’ve also been impressed by Northwestern, whose athletes excel in grades but only come repeatedly close to winning basketball games.But they “come close” consistently.

I also understand that Northwestern does not offer any athletic scholarships, so their athletes come primarily for a good education.

Cordially,Lee

Lee A. Butz, Rev., at 3:00 pm EDT on March 24, 2008

The objective of College should be to educate and graduate students. College basketball should be rewarded for a good graduation rate. It could work if the school is allowed a limited number of scholorships. When a student with a scholarship graduates that scholarship will become available for another student. If the student does not graduate in 4 years the scholarship is not available until he does graduate, or 8 years after he started his freshman year, whichever occurs first. If a school does not graduate students they do not have scholorships for new players. The coach will have to work to graduate players or he won’t have scholorships to offer.

Fred Moore, at 5:00 pm EDT on March 25, 2008

Women’s Bracket

I’m with Barbara — Please do a women’s bracket too.

Lady Vol Fan, at 5:55 am EDT on April 1, 2008

Women’s bracket

Hi — Doug Lederman here, editor of Inside Higher Ed. To those asking for a women’s bracket — I’ll definitely keep that in mind for next year. The main reason I didn’t, to be honest, is because we created the bracket to remind folks that these are supposed to be students playing in these games, and that dichotomy is just not as severe in the women’s game as in the men’s. But point taken.

Doug Lederman, Editor at Inside Higher Ed, at 7:15 am EDT on April 1, 2008

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