DaveIreland:
Over the past few years, all athletic scholarships have become quite a bit stricter regarding the student/athlete maintaining a certain grade point average (GPA). Said differently, they can certainly flunk out and will promptly lose their scholarship. This applies to all sports and it is incumbent upon the coach of whatever team to insure that his/her kids keep their grades up...on the other hand "easy curriculums
" usually taken by athletes, especially those in football and basketball - to insure that they don't flunk out and are lost from the team.
It is largely up to the athletic scholarship recipient to choose what they want to study. While many of them choose easy degrees, some of them indeed study business, engineering, pre-med and pre-law...so it is difficult to characterize/stereotype what they are going to study. I would expect that Graeme McDowell probably pursued a worthy degree and obtained it before going on tour.
Overall the number one responsibility of the coach is to recruit/assemble as talented a team as possible. This applies in all of the sports as it is widely agreed that "talent wins games" so this is true in football/basketball as it is in golf. (BTW I forgot to mention that many American colleges indeed have full scholarships for soccer/world football too).
Some college golf coaches are better known for their instructional capabilties than others. This is natural. While at the same time, they are constantly on the prowl for talent, therefore the ability for a non-U.S. player to receive a scholarship offer is good - if he can prove through his scores/tourney results that he is a real playa...often, they will travel with their parents to play in U.S. regional tournaments while at the same sending advance materials about their playing abilities to targeted colleges. The golf coach from that school is then able to meet the non-U.S. athlete at the tournament and watch them play. So in this regard, there is a lot of "courting' that goes on in American college golf recruiting, with savvy players/parents discretely seeking out targeted schools.
Notice players on UAB's roster here in Birmingham from Ireland and Australia...
http://uabsports.cstv.com/sports/m-g...-golf-mtt.html
Similarly, Oklahoma State has produced several PGA Tour stars and has players from Spain and Australia on their current team..
http://www.okstate.com/SportSelect.d...156&SPSID=1708