Education Secretary Wants To Fine College Coaches Whose Players Don’t Graduate

Politico

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/03/arne-duncan-wants-to-fine-basketball-coaches-whose-159923.html

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is calling for the imposition of financial penalties on college basketball and football coaches whose players don’t graduate.

Duncan argues in a USA Today op-ed that too many coaches get bonuses for athletic performance that far outpace the bonuses for academic achievement.

“If universities and colleges want to readjust a coach’s priorities, they need to change the penalties and incentives they offer coaches,” he and co-author Tom McMillen write. “…Poor academic performance means the team or the individual player — not the coach — gets punished. But no coach should receive financial bonuses when much of his team is flunking out or failing to get a degree.”

McMillen, a member of the University System of Maryland board of regents, reviewed roughly 50 contracts for head coaches of college football and basketball and found that a majority earned more than $2 million annually. The average total for athletic incentives was $600,000 per coach, while the average academic incentive was $52,000 per coach.

“Governing boards and college presidents can take steps to right that imbalance,” Duncan and McMillen write. “They could adopt a model of “best practices” that includes greater parity in new contracts for coaches between academic and athletic bonuses and provides penalties for poor academic performance.”