Inside Higher Education’s NCAA bracket stacks up basketball teams’ performances in the classroom instead of the court.
And this year’s 2011 winner is Butler University.
For six years Inside Higher Education has filled out its bracket according to how the tournament teams compare based on their academic progress rate — a scoring system that ranks teams based on their players performance in the classroom.
The UNC men’s basketball team was the predicted champ in 2009, but this year they were defeated in the fourth round by Princeton University.
“I think it’s cool that we got so far and makes sense we got beat by Princeton,” said Andrew Paschal, a sophomore English major at UNC.
“It is something that’s worth noting. I think a school should be a lot more than just its athletics,” he said.
Freshman Abbey Wells said she was surprised with Butler’s academic win over some of the Ivy League schools, Duke University and UNC.
“I guess we should place more of an academic interest in our athletics,” she said. “But then I think its surprising that we didn’t win with Zeller being awarded Academic All-American.”
Wells said if she were creating her own NCAA bracket she would base the competition on how players might fair in the NBA.
Leslie Uy, a freshman psychology major, said she thinks UNC fared well in the bracket’s academic ranking.
“Athletes’ scores and grades don’t always reflect the grades of other university students and I think that could account for some schools beating others,” she said.
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