Earlier this month, the NCAA released the updated Diploma Dashboard, a database that compares undergraduate degrees earned by college athletes and the general student body. The updated data spans from 2006 through the 2019-2020 season. Data for Division III is not publicized.
The NCAA dashboard aims to provide transparency on student-athletes in the classroom and can be sorted by year, degree, race, and sport. The database is a popular resource for researchers, school administrators, and college-athlete hopefuls. The NCAA also uses the database to understand the impact on student-athletes’ academic interests.
Swimming and diving falls into the catch-all “other sports” category of the dashboard, but the database reveals findings about student-athletes’ majors compared to the general student population. Student-athletes and non-athletes that study social sciences graduate at similar rates of 15% and 14% respectively.
However, athletes are more likely to earn business degrees than non-athletes in Division I and Division II. In Division II, female student-athletes are seven percent more likely to earn a degree in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subject area than female non-athletes. Per the dashboard, student-athletes are also twice as likely to graduate with degrees connected to fitness and recreation.
As colleges and universities around the country remain impacted by COVID-19 both in and out of the classroom, it will be interesting to see if the pandemic and remote learning have impacted the data trends regarding the college majors that NCAA student-athletes earn.
Anybody think it might be a good use of NCAA resources to determine which schools are out of Title IX Compliance?
What are the majors of the most dominant duo in history?
According to UVA’s athletics website, Douglass is CS and A Walsh is undeclared
That’s crazy. CS is so hard. Props to her
Walsh recently went on a podcast and said she was a cs major.
In the College of Arts and Sciences at UVA, basically the non-engineering, education, commerce, and nursing majors, you don’t have to declare until the end of your second year.
Walsh recently went on a podcast and said she was a cs major
so they are both VERY smart and fast
Are their CS majors BA or BS?
They are not in the Engineering school. The CS degree from the engineering school requires math and science courses and is much harder.
UVA has both BS and BA in CS. They are both getting the BA which has less requirements than the BS does but still gets you a degree in computer science.
Of note as well, Lexi Cuomo is majoring in Chemical Engineering – talk about being smart!
We’re going to start a little project to chase down the majors of the top X NCAA swimmers. Stay tuned!