Conversation Two (5-8)
W: (5)According to a study of race and equity in education, black athletes are dropping out of college across the country at alarming rates. With us to talk about the findings in the study is Washington Post columnist Kevin Blackstone. Good morning.
M: Good morning, how are you?
W: Fine, thank you. What is new that you found in this study?
M: (6)Well, this is Shaun Harper’s study, and he points out that on major college campuses across the country, black males make up less than 3 percent of undergraduate enrollments. Yet, when you look at their numbers or percentages on the revenue-generating sports teams of football and basketball, they make up well into 50 to 60 percent of those teams. So the idea is that they are really there to be part of the revenue-generating working class of athletes on campus and not necessarily there to be part of the educating class as most students in other groups are.
W: (6)(7)Compared with other groups, I think the numbers in this group, at those 65 schools, are something like just barely more than half of the black male athletes graduate at all.
M: Exactly. And what’s really bad about this is these athletes are supposedly promised at least one thing as reward for all their blood and sweat. And that is a college degree, which can be a transformative tool in our society when you talk about upward mobility. And that’s really the troubling part about this.
W: Well, this has been talked about so much, really, in recent years. Why hasn’t it changed?
M: Well, I think one of the reasons it hasn’t changed is because there’s really no economic pressure to change this. (8)All of the incentive is really on winning and not losing on the field or on the court. Coaches do not necessarily have the incentive to graduate players.
用户评论