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Graduation Rates for Athletes Stable

The proportion of athletes who entered Division I colleges between 1997 and 2000 and earned degrees within six years — 77 percent — did not budge from the previous year, National Collegiate Athletic Association officials said Wednesday in their first of several annual reports on how athletes fared academically. But the association’s president, Myles Brand, cited data showing improvements over time in high-profile (and traditionally low performing) sports — notably men’s basketball — to argue that the NCAA’s newly adopted academic rules are beginning to have an impact.

“We have seen some effect of our academic reform, and it has been positive,” Brand said in a telephone news conference Wednesday. He was particularly enthused by statistics showing that the Graduation Success Rate — the NCAA’s home-grown metric for measuring longterm academic performance — for men’s basketball had improved from 55.8 percent for the class that entered Division I colleges in 1995 to 63.6 percent for the class of 2000. “It is very encouraging as an early indication that thousands of athletic administrators, coaches and, most importantly, student-athletes are understanding the importance of getting an education and taking to heart the value of being a student-athlete,” added Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and chairman of the NCAA’s Committee on Academic Performance, which helped draft the new standards.

The information released by the association on Wednesday provides sport-specific data both at the national level and college by college (select from the dropdown menus on the linked page to find your institution of choice). The NCAA provides some data about athletes’ performance using the federal graduation rate, but the association emphasizes the Graduation Success Rate, which Brand characterizes as far more accurate because it includes athletes who transfer into NCAA colleges (rather than focusing exclusively on first-time freshmen) and excludes from the denominator athletes who leave their colleges in good academic standing.

At the national level, although the overall proportion of athletes who earned degrees stayed constant from the previous year’s report, Brand emphasized the progress in multiple sports over the last few years, as the NCAA has altered its rules to hold colleges more accountable for the classroom success of their athletes.

Below is a look at how athletes fared sport by sport at the national level:

Graduation Success Rates and Federal Graduation Rates for Division I Athletes, Selected Years

 

1996 Entering Class

1998 Entering Class

2000 Entering Class

1997-2000 Entering Classes

Men’s Sports

GSR

GSR

GSR

Federal Rate

Baseball

66.7%

64.7%

67.3%

45%

Basketball

58.7

59.0

63.6

45

Cross Country/Track

74.0

73.6

73.4

60

Fencing

82.4

90.0

84.6

70

Football (FBS)

65.6

65.4

64.7

56

Football (FCS)

63.4

65.7

63.5

54

Golf

77.0

77.6

80.7

60

Gymnastics

80.4

91.8

84.8

72

Ice Hockey

81.5

82.3

79.1

68

Lacrosse

92.0

85.0

90.2

75

Rifle

67.9

73.1

82.8

62

Skiing

100.0

68.4

76.9

60

Soccer

77.5

80.4

75.3

58

Swimming

81.7

81.1

83.8

68

Tennis

82.1

83.3

81.8

63

Volleyball

74.0

84.1

84.5

65

Water Polo

86.0

86.7

87.1

69

Wrestling

71.6

70.4

73.2

53

         

Women’s Sports

       

Basketball

73.7

81.5

80.7

64

Bowling

100.0

50.0

68.2

59

Crew

89.7

89.2

91.8

73

Cross Country/Track

82.8

83.1

84.3

68

Fencing

92.9

94.7

89.3

83

Field Hockey

93.7

95.5

93.1

82

Golf

90.6

86.5

87.9

69

Gymnastics

92.4

97.1

94.6

85

Ice Hockey

100.0

83.3

96.8

74

Lacrosse

93.0

92.9

94.2

83

Rifle

90.0

62.5

80.0

68

Skiing

93.8

95.8

100.0

79

Soccer

86.7

86.6

89.6

71

Softball

84.5

84.8

86.0

70

Swimming

91.1

90.6

90.5

75

Tennis

88.4

88.8

89.1

70

Volleyball

86.6

87.4

88.0

71

Water Polo

80.8

81.7

81.0

77

Although Brand touted the improvement in men’s basketball graduation rates in recent years, he also noted that the sport lags behind all others in its overall performance. Below is a snapshot of how last year’s top Division I basketball teams (as ranked by USA Today at season’s end) fared in the latest NCAA stats, which shows starkly the ways in which many big-time basketball programs — including some of the most successful ones — fail to graduate players:

Graduation Success and Federal Graduation Rates for 2006-7 Division I Top 25 Men’s Basketball Teams, 1997-2000 Entering Classes

 

Graduation Success Rate

Federal Rate

U. of Florida

100%

67%

Ohio State U.

40

27

U. of California at Los Angeles

40

29

Georgetown U.

82

60

U. of Kansas

45

40

U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

86

60

U. of Memphis

40

30

U. of Oregon

59

43

Texas A&M U.

40

25

U. of Pittsburgh

56

44

Southern Illinois U.

79

73

U. of Wisconsin at Madison

67

62

Butler U.

92

82

U. of Nevada at Las Vegas

15

0

U. of Southern California

29

27

U. of Texas at Austin

33

23

Washington State U.

35

14

U. of Tennessee at Knoxville

33

20

Vanderbilt U.

83

64

U. of Louisville

50

40

U. of Nevada at Reno

35

40

Winthrop U.

77

50

U. of Maryland at College Park

0

0

U. of Virginia

80

65

Virginia Tech

67

17

The NCAA has appointed a special panel to look at strategies for improving the academic performance of male basketball players.

Doug Lederman

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Comments

GSR

I think that some top schools should be ashamed of themselves. Maryland has an astonishing 0% GSR. That is flat out ridiculous. The student-athletes have to learn that they can go pro in something other than sports and it falls on the schools and the athletic department to help guide them through this process. Overall, I’m glad the GSR has improved and I think that it will continue to improve.

Hervey Malone, Cal Poly Pomona, at 12:00 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

Poorly explained article/data

Hervey...the 0% graduation rate for Maryland is extremely misleading. There were only 10 players counted during that time. Maryland was very successful during those years and many of the players left school early to play in the NBA or overseas. Schools can’t force a student to remain enrolled. This has no reflection on the academic experience they had while they were enrolled. Also, this data is also almost 10 years old. Recently the NCAA has instituted penalties for poor graduation rates and changes are underway.

Brian, at 12:25 pm EDT on October 4, 2007

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