Some private D3 institutions, including one I'm fairly familiar with, deliberately take in freshmen with dubious academic backgrounds, many of whom will be gone by the second semester. And we know why: they (or their parents) pay money to stick around from September till December. Some, of course, happen to be athletes, including football players.
While I understand that many of these venues have increasing need for dollars, I also have some reservations about the ethics of accepting money from students when they are being treated as what might be called the academic equivalent of cannon fodder.
Do I have a solution to this situation? No, I don't, yet I'm convinced there has to be one.
I would respond that the fiduciary obligation to that student and his/her parents from/by the college is to provide the remedial support, including assessment of academic skills which that student-athlete did not achieve, acquire, or develop, to succeed. The coaching staffs at those colleges would be acting in the student/athlete's interest to confirm that the student/athlete is attending class, using college sponsored tutoring that is available to
all students (no preferences) and striving to take advantage of these opportunities afforded in campus life. The college has given the student-athlete the chance to turn his/her life around or to reach goals that the nay-sayers do not believe can reached. It might even require diagnostic testing to see if there are any previously undetermined learning challenges in the student/athlete.
This may be an area for emphasis in a college that has a higher than average percentage of first generation attendees.
That is a covenant relationship that a college may undertake in good faith. How many successful "saves" do you need to make that a worthy endeavor for the outreach of the institution? Do you save 10%? 20%? If this challenge is laid out for the parents and the student/athlete at the beginning of the recruitment process, then I believe that it is a valid program.
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