[BostonCard]

A high graduation rate could just mean the school is a diploma mill with easy degrees. Or maybe, these people who don't graduate are smart and move on before finishing degree requirements because they don't need that degree to do what they want to do next. Can always come back twenty years later unlike a lot of us who needed that degree to do what we wanted to do next.

Perhaps the broader point is that Duke is still prestigious enough to have rejected my son and I doubt anyone really cares which grown adults decide not to finish their coursework.

The bar for GSR is ridiculously low.  A player who leaves the school in good standing doesn’t count against GSR, and it’s a six year graduation timeline.  A player who left the school to the NBA but was on track to graduate wouldn’t hurt the GSR, so Cooper Flagg probably wouldn’t hurt their GSR unless he was so checked out from school that he was not making academic progress.  Which, maybe (though I haven’t read anything that says he was a dummy).  

That it doesn’t matter is different than “Duke shows you can have athletic success and academic success” (unless the OP was excluding athletes from that).  No doubt Duke is a great school.  But also no doubt that for men’s college basketball, in particular, the school has been willing to stretch its standards so that athletic success does seem to have compromised academic success for the athletes.  As you point out, the other students still get a very well regarded university, and get to enjoy a winning basketball team to boot, so I don’t begrudge them their choice, but we should not pretend that there was no compromise.

BC

[BostonCard]

A high graduation rate could just mean the school is a diploma mill with easy degrees. Or maybe, these people who don't graduate are smart and move on before finishing degree requirements because they don't need that degree to do what they want to do next. Can always come back twenty years later unlike a lot of us who needed that degree to do what we wanted to do next.

Perhaps the broader point is that Duke is still prestigious enough to have rejected my son and I doubt anyone really cares which grown adults decide not to finish their coursework.

The bar for GSR is ridiculously low.  A player who leaves the school in good standing doesn’t count against GSR, and it’s a six year graduation timeline.  A player who left the school to the NBA but was on track to graduate wouldn’t hurt the GSR, so Cooper Flagg probably wouldn’t hurt their GSR unless he was so checked out from school that he was not making academic progress.  Which, maybe (though I haven’t read anything that says he was a dummy).  

That it doesn’t matter is different than “Duke shows you can have athletic success and academic success” (unless the OP was excluding athletes from that).  No doubt Duke is a great school.  But also no doubt that for men’s college basketball, in particular, the school has been willing to stretch its standards so that athletic success does seem to have compromised academic success for the athletes.  As you point out, the other students still get a very well regarded university, and get to enjoy a winning basketball team to boot, so I don’t begrudge them their choice, but we should not pretend that there was no compromise.

BC