INDIANAPOLIS—The high-profile Division I sports of baseball, football and men’s basketball are receiving high marks on their latest report cards, according to the latest NCAA Academic Progress Rates.
Baseball, football and men’s basketball saw their most recent multi-year APR scores move upward, said NCAA President Myles Brand. He noted these sports faced academic challenges in the past but have seen steady improvement since APR scores first were calculated.
“After five years of APR application and data collection, there is clear evidence of upward trends in nearly every sport,” Brand said. “Especially encouraging are the increases in baseball, football and men’s basketball – the three sports that have historically been problem sports.”
Baseball’s four-year APR is 946, men’s basketball posted a 933 APR, and football’s APR is 939. Over the past five years, the single-year APR in baseball has risen 31 points, while those single-year rates in men’s basketball and football both have risen nearly 18 points.
Brand stressed the latest APR data highlight that academic reform has led to improved behavior in the classroom across the board in nearly every sport. The overall four-year Division I APR is 964, with the overall single-year rate up 10 points to 971 compared to five years ago. The number of student-athletes leaving school academically ineligible, meanwhile, continues to sharply decrease.
Compared to 2004-05, the first year of APR penalties, there are 910 fewer student-athletes this year considered “0-for-2,” meaning they did not earn either the eligibility or the retention point under the APR calculation. Students considered 0-for-2 account now for just 2.6 percent of all Division I student-athletes, and the number of 0-for-2 student-athletes has decreased by nearly 1,800 in just the past three years.
A combination of policy changes in recent years all worked together to boost overall APR scores, said Walter Harrison, chair of the Committee on Academic Performance and president of the University of Hartford.
These include more stringent progress-toward-degree requirements; increased core-course requirements; a rule allowing student-athletes who fit a certain academic profile to transfer without penalty; requiring transfer student-athletes to earn the eligibility point to receive financial aid; and the adoption of a package of reforms in baseball.
“This is very positive information,” Harrison said. “We should all take a great deal of satisfaction that a lot of work over a lot of years by a lot of people has resulted in the increased academic performance of student-athletes. Nothing happens overnight; it happens gradually.”
Baseball and men’s basketball improvements are more dramatic than football, Brand said, which continues to make progress but at a slower rate than these other two sports, particularly in eligibility rates. Eligibility rates in men’s basketball continued the sharp increases seen last year, and retention rates rose as well.
Some of the retention increase can be attributed to an adjustment in the APR calculation that allows student-athletes earning a 2.6 grade point average and meeting other academic requirements to transfer without losing the retention point. Historical data reveal that student-athletes fitting this academic profile go on to graduate at rates similar to student-athletes who do not transfer.
Baseball eligibility and retention rates improved dramatically, in part because of academic reforms overall and specifically in that sport. These reforms require all transfers to leave an institution academically eligible to receive athletics aid at another institution; require baseball student-athletes to be academically eligible going into the fall term to participate in spring competition; require minimum financial aid for all baseball student-athletes; and eliminated the one-time transfer exception for baseball.
While dramatic increases were noted in both baseball and men’s basketball, football continues to be a concern, Harrison said, with eligibility rate increases in that sport not commensurate with eligibility improvement in most other sports. The Football Academic Working Group is working to identify problems and solutions for that sport.
Another concern comes in women’s basketball, where the number of APR 0-for-2s increased significantly from 2006-07 to 2007-08 and overall eligibility rates have decreased over the past two years, Harrison said.
Every Division I sports team calculates its APR each academic year, based on the eligibility, retention and graduation of each scholarship student-athlete. Teams that score below 925 on their four-year rate and have a student leave school academically ineligible can lose up to 10 percent of their scholarships through immediate penalties. Teams can also face historically based penalties for poor academic performance over time.
This is the fourth year of immediate penalties and the third for historically based penalties. Teams facing a third year of historically based penalties can be banned from postseason play, in addition to scholarship losses and restricted practice time resulting from a second year of long-term sanctions.
Next year, institutions could confront restricted Division I membership for the entire athletics department if a team has four consecutive years of poor academic performance.
The number of teams not meeting the benchmarks for historically based penalties (900 APR) and more immediate penalties (925 APR) fell dramatically over the last four years, with a remarkable drop occurring in the last year. Less than 10 percent of teams have APR scores below 925, and less than 4 percent have APR scores under 900.
On the penalty side of academic reform, 177 teams at 107 different colleges and universities will receive an immediate or historical sanction this year.
A total of 104 teams did not earn a 925 APR and had a student-athlete leave school ineligible, and they will incur immediate scholarship losses. Twenty-two teams will lose immediate scholarships and receive the first historically based penalty (public warning) as well for posting an APR below 900.
Another 18 teams under 900 APR will receive a public warning; 30 teams will receive playing and practice restrictions in the second stage of historical penalties; and three have been assessed a ban on postseason competition for the first time, the third stage of historical penalties (of those three postseason ban penalties, there is one pending appeal).
Over the past five years, 5,673 delayed graduation points were awarded, with 48 percent of the total occurring in men’s basketball, baseball and football. In the last year, 1,370 delayed graduation points were earned, similar to the number earned last year. These points are earned when former Division I student-athletes return to school and complete their degree.
Last month, 767 teams were public recognized for posting multi-year APRs in the top 10 percent of each sport.
The most recent APR scores are multi-year rates based on the scores from the 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years.
APR scores per institution, along with penalties per school and teams receiving public recognition, are available online at www.ncaa.org.
