USA Today article on easy majors for athletes

GTKyle

GTKyle

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http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2008-11-18-majors-cover_N.htm

Good chunk on GT:
Hewitt, the Georgia Tech men's basketball coach, bluntly articulated many coaches' view of the "unintended consequences" of the APR system at the Knight Commission meeting in June. He said then that when an NCAA official came to the Atlantic Coast Conference meetings four years ago to discuss the APR system, "almost every coach said: 'You understand what you're basically telling us. We're going to encourage our kids to take the easiest path to eligibility.'

"So if I'm at a Georgia Tech, I'm not going to tell a young man he can't major in engineering," Hewitt said. "But I certainly will counsel him before he takes that first class that … if you decide to go down this road and for some reason you find it harder than you expected and you decide to change your major, you're probably more than likely going to end up being ineligible" for sports.

At Georgia Tech last year, 63% of the juniors and seniors on the men's basketball team majored in management. So did 83% of those on the baseball team and 82% of those on the football team. A little more than 11% of all juniors and seniors at the school were in the major.

Isma'il Muhammad, a basketball player who earned a management degree from Georgia Tech in 2005, said he considered majoring in international affairs, but "it just didn't make sense. I would have had to stop playing basketball," which he has been doing professionally outside the USA since graduating.

Asked why management is so popular among athletes, he said, "They want to own their own business or have other big aspirations. Also, we're not crazy. … Was management easier than engineering? Of course, but Georgia Tech doesn't offer any easy classes or easy majors. It's not like I was a basketball player majoring in pottery."

Muhammad also says he has leads for post-basketball jobs. "Finding a job is not an issue even in this economy we have right now," he says. "A lot of people are affiliated with Tech and (are) fans of basketball and Coach Hewitt."
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Agreed.

Tech's Management degree is not easy. It's certainly easier than say Chemical Engineering, but you really have to work hard to do well in Management.
 
I still remember watching an ND game 15 or 20 years ago (rooting hard against them of course) when they had the "scholar athlete of the week" or some such and they went on and on and on about some lineman who had about a 3.2 in business and went on and on about how much harder that was than a typical football major.

I thought, "Wait a sec, that's our 'easy' major that most of ours athletes more or less have to take because most people couldn't do an engineering major and play football at the same time."

"Easy" is relative of course.
 
Anyone who goes to GT knows that choosing Management as your major is taking the "M-train." The gtg's wrote a song about it and I am sure that all of you are familiar with it. Management is not a gimme, but it is by far the easiest major at Tech (but that's not saying much as Tech is a tough school).
 
By the end of the four years, even on the M-train, you will encounter a derivative and/or integral and that alone puts it head and shoulders above any Communications / P.E. / General Studies / Education / Football major.
 
cajunjacket said:
Anyone who goes to GT knows that choosing Management as your major is taking the "M-train." The gtg's wrote a song about it and I am sure that all of you are familiar with it. Management is not a gimme, but it is by far the easiest major at Tech (but that's not saying much as Tech is a tough school).
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The point I'm trying to make is that even Tech's "easiest" major is still tougher than a lot of schools' hardest ones.
 
I miss seeing Ish posterize people. Glad to see that he's doing alright for himself. Good quotes from him about the school as well.

Nice find Kyle.
 
cajunjacket said:
Management as your major is taking the "M-train." The gtg's wrote a song about it
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Durn! I should watch that some time. I had assumed it was about MARTA. :laugher:

When I was there, we simply refered to management as "the sink".
 
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