<p>keefer,
I think that there may be some discrepancy in the numbers that you are drawing from and the NCAA reported Graduation Success Rate data which has the following for men’s basketball:</p>
<p>64% Boston College (vs bootleg’s report of 31%)
67% Duke (40%)
82% Georgetown (42%)
29% USC (27%)
89% Northwestern (43%)
91% Notre Dame (53%)</p>
<p>Also, for a few of the other colleges that I frequently mention</p>
<p>67% Stanford
83% Vanderbilt
85% Rice
1005 Wake Forest</p>
<p>and a few of the top publics</p>
<p>33% UC Berkeley
80% U Virginia
40% UCLA
57% U Michigan
86% U North Carolina
92% William & Mary</p>
<p>I don’t see this so much as a private vs public thing, but rather the institutional choices that each college makes. Clearly, the above data shows some privates with (IMO) unacceptably low graduation rates (USC is ridiculous!) while also showing several publics with high and very impressive graduation rates. </p>
<p>My point is only that top privates that I often write about (Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame) have good academic standards for their athletes and certainly much higher than is generally accredited to them here on CC.</p>