Olson blames educators for UA's low graduation rate

Adam F. Jarrold Arizona Daily Wildcat Lute Olson, UA men's basketball head coach, speaks yesterday at Gallagher Theatre as part of the Faculty Fellows' Building Academic Community speaker series.

He cited the university's 51 percent general student graduation rate - which ranks ninth among Pacific 10 Conference schools - as reason to rethink priorities.

"Forty-nine percent not getting degrees, that's a deplorable statistic," Olson said. "What can we do to help? If we are teachers and educators than we should do everything we possibly can to help them achieve."

Olson, speaking to a crowd of about 200 at the Gallagher Theatre as part of the Faculty Fellows' Building Academic Community speaker series, said educators are as much to blame for the low rates as students.

"It's not a failure on the students, though they have to go to class," Olson said. "It's a failure on us as educators."

The rates for the athletic department are 64 percent. That is 13 percent above the general student rate, a number that ranks UA first in the Pac-10.

"Sixty-four is not great and we are certainly not pleased," Olson said. "We are constantly working to get better."

Olson shared anecdotes from his early coaching career to help illustrate just how much some educators do in a day. At the start of his career, Olson was in rural Minnesota teaching six high school classes a day, coaching basketball, baseball and football. Thinking he had some time to himself one particular gameday, he went in to tell the head football coach he was going home for a while.

"He said, 'Maybe you didn't read your job description," Olson said. "'You have to go out and line the football fields."

Of course Olson no longer lines fields, but his role as an educator has not ended, he said.

"We sent out a letter a few years ago to teachers saying we wanted to work together to help this young man succeed," Olson said. "I got a letter back saying 'I resent your paternalistic attitude' and I thought 'why is this person in education?"

Olson also cited his team's spring grade point average as a reason to think positively about student-athletes.

"When we got back from the tournament, we challenged them to get the highest spring GPA of any team we've had," Olson said. "And they went out and did it."

At the conclusion of his speech, Olson made sure to remind the educators in the audience of his message.

"We all need to take a look and ask ourselves 'Is there something we can do in addition to what we are doing now to help these young people do what they need to do."