Education Reforms - Key Factors Institution Should Consider When Exploring a Change in Divisions - Assignment Example

Education Reforms - Key Factors Institution Should Consider When Exploring a Change in DivisionsIntroductionNCAA is a nonprofit association committed to providing opportunity for college student athletes who compete annually in college sports. An obligation to academics and student athlete success in the classroom is a vital part of the NCAA’s mission to integrate athletics into higher education. Members of NCAA and national office are known as NCAA (Guthrie, 2003). Factors to consider by higher education institution include academic factors like academic performance, learning environment, academic progress classroom attendance, and library use.

Secondly, social factors that include: social environment, social atmosphere, discipline of the student or player, campus life and personality of the coach. The third factor is ethnic and gender issues. The fourth factor is financial influence. Other factors include knowing athletes at the university, ethic/gender ratio at the university, knowing someone on the team, and the number of alumni in professional sports.Academic factorsThese factors include the academic performance of the athlete, classroom attendance, and participation, presence of computer labs and library use.

For an athlete to move from NCAA division II to NCAA division I he or she must display a history of more than an average academic performance for a division I team to allow any student to join them. Chances are that a student who is an athlete and performs in class is more likely to get a chance to join a Division I institution. Academic also involve the use of both the library and computer lab. A student who has some knowledge on how to operate computers is also considered because of digital technology being used in the sports industry (Hawkins, 2010).

Social factorsThese factors influence the sociological aspect of students who are sportspeople to move from division II to division I. Higher education institution must consider the social environment at the university, social atmosphere of the team, campus and the personality of the coach. Social environment include all the factors that relate to students interacting with other students, team unity and discipline of the student (Einhorn & Rapoport, 2005). A disciplined student is able to differentiate wrong from wright and at the same time advises the colleagues positively both academic wise and in sports.

Personality of the coach is also considered. A good example is how public schools use sports to socialize and demonstrate the significance of the schools to the community (Guthrie, 2003).Media coverage of the teamHigher education institution must consider the extent to which the media displays the team. A good team is that which has few media scandals relating to its players. This is a factor to consider because for an athlete or student to move from Division II to Division I, his or her former team must have a previously clean media history.

Most of students who move to Division I teams must have played in a previous Division II team with no history of negative media coverage. An example is an article of NCAA published in 2005 that conducted space comparison of male and female, coaches and their sports that the media displayed how women are under-represented by higher institution of education (Einhorn & Rapoport, 2005).Ethnic/Gender ratioHigher education institution has to consider the presence of different ethnic groups and the ratio of men to women in offering opportunities to students moving from division II to division I.

it is most likely that boys are given more opportunities to move to division I than girls. This must be observed to ensure that there is balance in offering equal chances to girls for them to join a good team in division I. Ethnicity is also a factor to consider so as to ensure different ethnicities can be given an opportunity to select and move to Division I teams of their choice(Hawkins,2010). A good example is data of 1999, 2005, and 2010 by NCAA gender and research shows that residency of student athletes can fall in any of any of the race and ethnicity categories hence higher institution of education must consider this data in moving students from division II to division I.

ReferenceHawkins, B. (2010). The new plantation: Black athletes, college sports, and predominantly White NCAA institutions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Einhorn, E., & Rapoport, R. (2005). How March became madness: How the NCAA tournament became the greatest sporting event in America. Chicago: Triumph Books.Guthrie, J. (2003). Encyclopedia of education (2nd Ed.). New York: Macmillan Reference USA.