INDIANAPOLIS --- The NCAA’s academic reform effort is firmly taking hold on campuses nationwide, according to the latest Division I Academic Progress Rates.

Second-year APR data show that 99 Division I sports teams at 65 colleges and universities—or less than 2 percent of 6,112 Division I sports teams nationwide—will lose scholarships for poor scholastic performance by their student-athletes.

Last year’s APR data indicated that as many as 350 Division I sports teams could have faced scholarship losses, or about 6 percent of squads nationwide.

"We are encouraged by the response on many campuses to academic reform,” said NCAA President Myles Brand. “The goal of academic reform is to improve academic behaviors and increase graduation, not unnecessarily penalize teams.”

This year’s APR, based on 2004-05 academic data, begins the penalty phase of academic reform, as last year’s data were used to identify poor-performing teams and warn of possible scholarship losses.

More serious consequences, which could include limits on postseason competition and restricted membership status, await teams that continue to academically under perform, as part of the historical penalty structure.

"Our phased-in approach to the APR and the accompanying penalty structure are changing the way the Division I athletics community thinks about student-athlete academic performance,” Brand said.

"The APR has become part of the athletics language—schools are incorporating the APR into their strategic plans and programming, and they are using it to hold coaches and other personnel accountable for student-athlete academic achievement,” Brand added. "Significant attention is being paid to meeting the new standards, and I expect the next few years of APR data to reflect that focus.”

The incentives side of academic reform begins this year as well, Brand said, as the NCAA will publicly recognize the top 10 percent of teams within each sport.

Of the 99 sports teams that will lose scholarships, 90 are men’s teams and 9 are women’s teams. The majority are included in three sports: football (23), baseball (21), and men’s basketball (17).

The list of teams receiving penalties and their institutions, along with the Top 10 percent of teams and other national APR data, is available on the NCAA website at www.ncaa.org.

Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and chair of the NCAA’s Committee on Academic Performance, emphasized that president and chancellors, athletics directors and coaches should use the APR as a real-time measure to guide their academic reform efforts in the future.

"The messages of academic reform are clear: recruit student-athletes who are capable of doing college-level work; help them meet the standards for progress toward a degree; and keep them enrolled so the opportunity for a quality education becomes a reality,” Harrison said.

For a team to lose a scholarship under the “contemporaneous penalty” portion of academic reform, a student-athlete must have failed academically and left the institution; and the team’s APR must be below 925 (out of 1000). The APR is calculated by measuring the academic eligibility and retention of student-athletes by team each term. Based on current data, an APR of 925 calculates to an approximate Graduation Success Rate of 60 percent.

Teams can lose up to 10 percent of scholarships each year allowed by NCAA rules under contemporaneous penalties. When a penalty is applied, a college or university may not re-award the scholarship of an ineligible student-athlete who left school to another student-athlete for one year.

To ensure fairness, the NCAA is providing a statistical adjustment based on team size during the first three years of APR reporting, to more accurately gauge teams’ long-range academic prospects. These squad-size adjustments, similar to margins of error used in polling, will be eliminated for data released in the 2007-08 academic year.

With this squad-size adjustment this year, 215 teams were below the 925 APR cutoff, including 178 men’s teams and 37 women’s teams. If the squad-size adjustment had not been in place, 943 teams would be below the APR cutoff, including 681 men’s or mixed teams and 262 women’s teams. To repeat, however, a scholarship is lost only if a student-athlete on one of these teams leaves academically ineligible.

"Teams that use the squad-size adjustment to escape penalty rather than improve their academic practices right away might find the ‘pay me later’ syndrome hard to accept,” said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice-president for membership services. “As more years of APR data become available, teams will find rates harder to change.”

The data show that the average APR for all Division I student-athletes is 955; the average for male student-athletes is 943, while the average for female student-athletes is 969. In the sports with the most penalties, the average APR for football is 929; the average for baseball is 931; and the average for men’s basketball is 927.

Under the academic reform plan, the NCAA allows for adjustments to the APR based on whether a student-athlete leaves in good academic standing to play professional sports or for other reasons beyond an institution’s control. Teams can also earn bonus points if a student-athlete returns after leaving school and completes his or her degree. In addition, the NCAA grants waivers of the scholarship penalties in limited situations based on institutional mission or other extenuating circumstances on a case-by-case basis.

All teams that fall below the 925 APR cutoff will be asked to develop academic improvement plans to address whatever issues are affecting the classroom success of their student-athletes. The NCAA provides educational materials online for institutions to guide them in their planning process, and these materials will be distributed to the presidents and chancellors of institutions with teams below the 925 APR cutoff.

Eight institutions have not yet completed the process for determining penalties under APR: Arizona State University; Northern Arizona University; San Diego State University; San Jose State University; Texas A&M University, College Station; University of Arizona; University of Kansas; Tulane University. The NCAA will release APR data on these institutions in the near future.