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In two separate instances I have been a long term insider at both a state school (14 years as a faculty member at a flagship state land grant - NCSU) and a small highly selective private school (9 years undergrad/grad at Duke including a very good friend who let me know what was going on the the admissions office). I've also compared notes many times with faculty at other schools. I'm in a very good position to compare the academic/athletic culture of both. You admit you are not.

Since your READING COMPREHENSION has FAILED you, I am now going to be blunt. [As an aside, flagship is not a technical term but the flagship university of NC is not NCSU.]

You dont know what you are talking about. As I pointed out to you I AM AN ACADEMIC. I have been one longer than you. I have met new minted NCSU PhDs who studied my work at NCSU.

What I said previously is that I am an academic AND a sports fan who has followed recruiting and recruit qualifying for years. You apparently are ignorant in several aspects of this.

You gave me one example of athletic admissions. Big deal. I'll give you a whole book. If you have the time go read "Admissions Confidential". It's a year in the life "expose' " of an admissions officer at Duke. Duke does its admissions "blind". That means the admissions officers don't know anything but the academic record of the applicant (financial status, legacy, athletic information, ethnicity is omitted). Admit/deny is done on that basis alone. For a very small number of applicants, e.g. athletes, there is a "second look" where the coach has to make a case to the admissions office that the athlete can do the work. The admissions officers fight like hell to keep those applicants out. The writer of the book hated the fact that they even had to do "second looks".

Duke does NOT do admissions blind. You are out of your mind if you think Duke players had to go through the same exact admission process as every other student at Duke. It is just laughable that you would say something so ignorant. How in the world would Duke coaches know who to recruit and sign. BTW, it does not count that admissions officer don't like it that they have to admit all the Duke athletic signees. It is not a "second look." It is which of these athletes that don't meet Duke standards have the Duke coaches signed and we must admit.

For the general student population, you can't compare difficulty of admission at a highly competitive small private school (DU = 6,200 students) that recruits the cream of the crop nationwide with a state school (UF = 49,000?) that also recruits the cream of the crop but mostly statewide. If you know UF so well tell me how many UF students come there from out of state and pay the out-of-state tuition? I'll bet it's less than 10%.

Why does out of state tuition matter? Look at the frosh classes of both places. Look at the number of national merit scholars. I am not sure why I have to keep making your arguments for you other than you apparently know nothing about this subject and little about data, but ANOTHER case you could make is that while UF and Duke SAT scores are not that much different, with Duke's higher, that Duke has about 15% of the undergrad student body of UF and Duke and UF probably have a similar number of scholarship athletes means that the Duke average SAT is more impacted by special admit students, ie athletes, than UF's average SAT is. But then this is not a discussion of UF v. Duke no matter how much you try to make it one. [BTW, your failure to recognize my arguments and pretending when I weaken my own arguments make me wonder if you actually were ever an academic. You certainly do not seem to understand how academics discuss issue and generally accept the weaknesses on their side of a point of view.]

Once a Duke-type school gets those highly qualified students admitted, since they are so uniformly well prepared, they are able to push the hell out of them and the academic environment is very very competitive if not to say cut-throat. I know. I lived it.

Yawn. Duke like very place else has easy majors and hard majors. Duke like every place else has hard professors teaching in easy departments and easy professors teaching in hard departments. As I said earlier Duke athletes may have fewer choices in majors which could make it harder, but I have NEVER hear the term GENTLEMAN "C" associated with a big public institution either. I too went to a private school and have taught at private school better than Duke and large public schools. I know in which type of institution professors more readily fail students.

And that's true for every major whether it's Engineering, Biology or English. There are no "kick back and relax" majors nor are there any "kick back and relax courses". Everything's hard. Since I've been associated with Duke they've, for example, eliminated the undergraduate Nursing School and the undergraduate Management Science major as not being rigorous enough. The vast majority of students graduate in 4 years. (At those prices who wants to pay even one more semester of tuition!)

Actually forestry was deleted way back when and it was because it was too expensive not its rigor. You are again making a silly silly argument. Duke English is known for PC babble. It is not a serious rigourous Department. I dont care how famous Fish and the gang are in leftist circles it for example is not a serious major. What did the pot banger come from? Duke, I believe. You don't think some of the pot bangers would cut an black Duke athlete some slack. You are kidding yourself.

If you take an unprepared or unqualified athlete and throw them in that mix they die no matter what help you give them. The fact that the Duke athletes don't die in that environment, and in fact almost all succeed, is testimony to admissions doing their job and then the university does its job by following up on them including the study halls, etc. that you mention.

Actually some cheat, some out work others, some look for easier courses, etc. Admissions has little to do with which athletes are admitted to Duke, so them doing their job is meaningless in this case.

JLS said:Private schools tend to be more arts and sciences oriented and that limits the number of "jock" majors. This has to do with keeping a player eligible, but not in getting them admitted.

LB said:Actually, it has plenty to do with it. At least at Duke it does. I can't believe you think they are separate issues. I hope it's not a separte issue at UF. No admissions department worth its salt should admit a student, athlete or not, that they know can't do the work. Admissions and eligibility are part and parcel of the same thing. At Duke there's no place for the athletic department to hide the "underperformers" and so they are not admitted in the first place (see above).

Again, one has to wonder if you are an academic only in your mind. Admissions is who gets in. Initial eligibility is the ability to qualify according to the NCAA. Eligibility is meeting the NCAA rules on making progress towards a degree.

By the way , have you ever heard of cluster analysis? If you took Duke student athletes, their admission standards and their majors, I bet cluster analysis would find us the easy majors right away. I bet the would not be in engineering or physic, but you can never be sure what the easy department is in any school.

You admit "I do not know the Duke case as well." Well I do. I'll take your word about UF if you'll take my word about Duke.

While I don't know the Duke case as well, I apparently know it about 100 times better than you. I tried to tell you from the start that you were out of your depth on this issue, but you took my superior understanding and admitting where my examples were from to be a lack of understanding and bias when in fact it is more evidence that I know more about this than you can even approach. I most certainly will not take your word on Duke admissions not admitting all players who only meet the NCAA minimum. I would need an example. I want to know the name of some recruit that Duke signed, was not admitted but was able to go to some other NCAA program that same fall.

Look, this has degenerated into a pissing match about Duke vs. UF. Both are fine academic institutions with, naturally enough, different charters. I'm glad to learn that UF is taking its charter seriously. Duke is as well. I wish more schools would do the same. The main part of the charter is to admit students who are up to university level work and then follow up to make sure they succeed in their academic work and receive a fine education. That includes athletes. That both schools do so should be a source of pride to both of us.

You made this into a pissing contest. I merely pointed out to you that you were wrong about certain things concerning athletes and admissions. I pointed with a numerical example that even if Duke gets the academically best high level athletes, their students athlete are probably at a greater academic disadvantage than say NCCU or NCSU students athletes. That is the nature of being a top school trying to compete athletically against schools that are not as academically good.

As I said, I only used UF examples to counter your incorrect statements about Duke compared to other schools because I know UF examples off the top of my head. Now perhaps we can get back to the issue at hand. I thought by now it was clear to most that I don't care one way about Duke. I also don't particularly care about the Duke lacrosse team, the three players who were indicted etc. The only thing I care about is that DA is running amok and abusing citizens. These citizens could be NCCU baseball players or nonathletes or black or white or Asian or anyone.

As an aside, flagship is not a technical term but the flagship university of NC is not NCSU.

The unified UNC system has 16 constituent campuses organized under a President and Board of Governors. Each campus has a Chancellor and Board of Trustees. UNC-Chapel Hill and NCSU are officially designated as flagship campuses by the State of North Carolina. I need read no further to be convinced of your ignorance.

You are an academic who knows only one environment - large state land grant. You make my point by noting that you have been there forever and know nothing else. "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".

It's telling that you insist on looking at athlete admissions from the athletic department point of view while I talk about athletic admissions from the admissions department point of view. Once again you have demonstrated your ignorance. Duke, in fact, does do blind admissions and has done so for at least the 30 years I have been associated with the school and I presume longer. I'm sorry if that concept blows your mind and you cannot imagine how such a system could work. Read the book and get back to me when you are better informed.

As far as this

ANOTHER case you could make is that while UF and Duke SAT scores are not that much different, with Duke's higher, that Duke has about 15% of the undergrad student body of UF and Duke and UF probably have a similar number of scholarship athletes means that the Duke average SAT is more impacted by special admit students, ie athletes, than UF's average SAT is.

that would be true if the Duke athletes weren't already to be qualified to be there in the first place, i.e., Duke doesn't need many special admits because the athletes are already qualified in the first place and are interested in the superior education Duke has to offer. I know it is a foreign experience to you but there are athletes that can gain admissions to top-notch schools without special consideration. Schools like Duke snap these applicants up and fill their athletic teams.

Your UF math classes have failed you. Can you not figure out that UF's huge (excuse me - this is FR - hugh) freshman class drawn largely from a single state cannot be as competitive as Duke's relatively tiny freshman class drawn nationwide?

Your UF economics classes have failed you. Recall the law of supply and demand? Out-of-state tuition matters because it is the true cost of a not-state-sponsored education. UF's out-of-state tuition is less than Duke's. If UF were all that great, top-notch out-of-state students would be storming the gates to get into UF as a relative bargain. But they are not. They are storming the gates to get into Duke.

You can talk about SATs and National Merit all you want. There's a very close to true joke that if you take three Duke students, one's a valedictorian, one's a salutatorian and one's an under performer. Duke's undergrad population is loaded with students who were first or second in their H.S. class.

I'm more interested in the end of the process (graduation) as opposed to the beginning of the process (admissions). You can talk about cluster analysis if you like. I promise you the "easy" major at Duke would crush the average student. Duke admits athletes and they get through in percentages approaching 100% without being cut slack or any opportunities to slip through truly easy majors. UF and most other schools cannot say that. (BTW, it took a while but Stanley Fish was eventually driven out of Duke a decade ago and is now at Florida International which is oh so proud to have him.)

BTW, you're not the first UF grad I've met with a raging inferiority complex. Must be something in the Gatorade which seems to be UF's only nationwide "academic" claim to fame.