Academic Integrity in Intercollegiate Athletics: Principles, Rules, and Best Practices
Adopted by vote of the Coalition membership, 1 April 2005
Summary Statement
The unique value of intercollegiate athletics lies in its potential to enhance education through engagement in sports. It can contribute to the personal development of athletes, it can form a focus of campus community for other students, and it can create bonds of shared loyalties to educational institutions among students, alumni, faculty, and broader communities. However, a century's experience has taught us that athletics can also compete with the educational missions of schools in ways that may negate this positive potential and undermine higher education. This document addresses a particular range of problems in this regard: practices connected with intercollegiate athletics that may weaken the academic integrity at the core of colleges and universities.
Most university faculty members in America are fans of college sports, but they are also stewards of academic integrity. A primary goal of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics is to find ways in which faculty can strengthen the basis of intercollegiate athletics by identifying and addressing problems that may have brought athletics into conflict with the values of the schools that engage in it, and help college sports fulfill its positive potential. Given their university role, this is a responsibility faculty members must fulfill, and because so many aspects of these questions involve the interrelatedness of schools that compete in sports and the need to ensure that we all compete on a fair basis, it makes sense for faculty to try to approach these issues both nationally, through a coalition, and individually at their own schools.
The document posted here is the product of lengthy development. The initial draft was formulated over the period of March-August, 2004, by members of the COIA Steering Committee, in consultation with members of the leaderships of the National Association of Academic Advisors for Athletics (the N4A) and the Drake Group. These colleagues provided months of valuable guidance based on their expertise and experience, and COIA is in their debt. It should be made clear that neither the N4A nor the Drake Group leaderships have endorsed all the ideas in the current draft, but their contributions as advisors have added a great deal. COIA is also in debt to Scott Kretchmar, Faculty Athletics Representative at Pennsylvania State University, who was also a member of the drafting group, and whose work on best practices for offices of academic advising for athletes formed our starting point for Section 5.
Comments on the initial draft were sought from all Division IA faculty senates during the Fall 2004, and from a variety of external groups, including the NCAA, AAUP, and AGB. In January 2005, representatives of twenty-six COIA member senates met at Vanderbilt to revise the draft and endorse it for further review and email comment. After a final round of amendments, the Coalition membership adopted the document by a vote of 30-1, with one abstention. Almost all votes were cast after local senate endorsement, positive votes being understood as support for the overall thrust of the draft and the general body of proposals, but not necessarily indicating endorsement of every specific provision.
Although this document includes many proposals, only three are suggested as rules, or NCAA bylaws, that should apply to all schools. The great majority are intended as best practice guidelines – policies that have worked well in practice at some schools or, in some cases, new ideas that are shared because they promise to address difficult problems that have resisted solution. The object is not to prescribe what schools must do, but to suggest issues that schools need to consider and approaches that may with adaptation fit local needs and strengthen the way athletics supports the educational mission. Where other local practices already accomplish the goal of academic integrity, those may in fact constitute best practices for that institution.