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A Strategic Plan for Athletics

Committee aims to set vision of the purpose of athletics at Duke

With a new oversight structure and a mission statement for athletics in place, the university is now looking to address large questions about the vision and future of athletics at Duke.

Political Science Professor Michael Gillespie, chair of the Athletic Council, discussed plans for writing a strategic plan for athletics at the November meeting of the Academic Council. With one out of 10 Duke undergraduate students participating in varsity sports, and thousands of students involved in intramurals and club sports, Gillespie said the strategic plan is needed to recognize the role Duke athletics plays in the educational experience and confront the challenges raised in combining athletics and academics.

"The goal is to foster a better understanding of how athletics works among faculty members, the president and the Board of Trustees, more involvement by faculty members in athletics, and a better vision for the place and purpose of athletics at Duke," Gillespie said. "In the end, the purpose should be to benefit student-athletes and understand how to help them have the best possible educational experience."

The process will focus on questions such as:

  • How can Duke bridge the gap between athletics and academics?
  • What are the benefits and costs to greater investment in athletics?
  • Should Duke fund 26 varsity sports and should it fully fund scholarships in all sports?
  • How can Duke improve the academic experience of athletes?

Gillespie said the evidence is that student-athletes are among the hardest working students on campus, adding that they work "a 20-hour work week during their season" on top of their Duke education.

"And yet our student-athletes vastly outperform athletes at almost every other school," Gillespie said. "Looking at their academic performance, they're not so terribly different from other students at Duke. In most cases, if you walked into a classroom, it would be difficult to figure out who are the athletes and who are the regular students."

A committee of faculty, students and administrators, facilitated by Duke Corporate Education Director Jared Bleak will write the plan. A final report is due by April or May.

In all, Duke offers 241 athletic scholarships spread out over more than 600 student-athletes (some receive partial scholarships.) The maximum that Duke could offer in its 26 sports while remaining in compliance with Title IX, which sets gender equity requirements, is 302, Gillespie said.

Despite the high costs of scholarships at a private university, Duke's annual subsidy for athletics is around $7.5 million, far less than any other school in the ACC (Wake Forest provides about $13.5 million) and considerably less than many Ivy League schools such as Princeton..

"The elephant in the room," Gillespie said is football, which takes up a large chunk of the athletics budget but has failed to produce a competitive team for some time. The fact is, Gillespie said, most top high school football players fall below Duke's minimum admission standard and can't come to Duke, and that's not going to change.

"We can recruit about 50 of the top 700 high school football players," he said. "We can't recruit the other 650 students and have to do better in landing those players who are academically qualified. Most of the athletes recruited by other ACC teams could not be admitted to Duke."

He said the solution is not to lower admissions standards for football, nor is it to create special majors designed to help academically challenged football players as has been done at other private universities. But improvements in facilities, different scheduling, and other changes might attract more of those student-athletes who are qualified.

Gillespie acknowledged concerns that athletes can get isolated from the larger Duke community, and this can give the impression that athletes have more behavior problems than other students, but he said in this respect athletes are not significantly different than the general student body. As Duke explores more ways of involving faculty members in the undergraduate experience, athletes will benefit as well.

"As with other students, athletes don't have much to do with faculty members after their classes. They are going to be much more susceptible to peer pressure than if faculty are more important in their lives. Our aim should be to promote greater faculty involvement in the lives not just of student-athletes but Duke undergraduates in general."

Gillespie and Bleak said they wanted members of the Duke community to share opinions and concerns about athletics with the committee. They can be reached at mgillesp@duke.edu or jared.bleak@dukece.com.