Editorial: Student-athletes should choose majors wisely

Are NCAA athletes merely majoring in their respective sports? Are NCAA athletes merely majoring in their respective sports?

Some of the NCAA’s faculty representatives have finally acknowledged that there is a problem with major clustering, the phenomenon of multiple student-athletes on a team choosing the same major.

The representatives said in the preliminary results of an NCAA survey that scheduling conflicts and the progress-toward-degree requirements — which call for 40, 60 and 80 percent completion in the second, third and fourth years of college — lead to major clustering.

Pitt takes pride in its student-athletes’ achievements, and rightfully so. With all of the time they devote to their sports, it’s pretty amazing that more than half of them earned at least a 3.0 GPA in the 2010-2011 academic year.

But if there is major clustering at Pitt, how much effort is going into those degrees, and what are our student-athletes really getting from this top-notch university?

A 2008 USA Today study of five prominent sports at 142 of the NCAA’s top-level schools examined which majors upperclassman student-athletes chose. For a team of 10 or more players, if 25 percent of upperclassmen have the same major, that constituted a cluster. For smaller teams, 33 percent was considered a cluster.

The results? A staggering 83 percent of the schools had at least one team with a major cluster.

According to our own research, this year’s football team is cluster-free. Well, sort of.

Almost half of the upperclassmen who publicized their future plans on Pitt’s roster are majoring in communications or administration of justice. That seems like a lopsided statistic.

But the phenomenon of major clustering is unfortunately in the nature of college sports.

Michael Miranda, the NCAA’s associate director of research, told The Chronicle that “If people’s behaviors are being influenced by the rules that we’re writing … we have to look at them.”

But we think that instead of more rules, the true solution would be a change of attitude. If fans would be content with lower-quality collegiate sports teams and higher-quality students, maybe student-athletes wouldn’t feel the need to pigeonhole themselves into an “easy” major that “everyone” is doing. But it doesn’t look like that will happen anytime soon.

Nonetheless, we think student-athletes should take the time to think about life after college, especially if they’re not going pro. Academics shouldn’t have to be neglected, and students — regardless of why they are here — are ultimately here to learn.

There’s no telling what the NCAA will do about major clustering, a topic that has been discussed ad nauseum for years, yet essentially left alone.

But we think true change is a matter of collective attitudes and priorities. And those aren’t so easy to change.