Certain majors find large clusters of student athletes

USA TODAY looked at the majors of more than 9,000 junior and senior athletes in football, baseball, softball, and men's and women's basketball and found high rates of concentrations of athletes in certain majors at 83% of schools. Some schools had several "clusters" and  more than half of the clusters are what some analysts refer to as "extreme," in which at least 40% of athletes on a team are in the same major. For example, all seven of the juniors and seniors on Texas-El Paso's men's basketball team majored in multidisciplinary studies. Education specialists say such clustering raises a range of potential problems, including academic fraud; certain majors and classes having dubious academic requirements; and coaches and athletics academic advisers inappropriately influencing students' decisions on majors and classes.