NCAA Attempts to Shed “Dumb Jock” Image

Because of our ongoing recognition of the importance of athletics to the growth of young men and women, we have consistently taken interest in the academic data released by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). As part and parcel to a renewed push towards increasing the graduation rates for student-athletes, each year the NCAA releases summary reports on graduation rates by university, broken out by sport and sex.

Analysis of the data released this year has brought about several compliments though they have been counterbalanced by the notation of several ongoing negative issues. However, if one digs a little deeper they will find that much of the positive data is not quite as it seems.

The Positives
Steve Wieberg, writing for the USA Today, offered the following rather positive comment after examining this year’s data: “the NCAA continues to chip away at the image of the dumb jock.” He bases his viewpoint on the NCAA press release, noting that “close to four of every five Division I athletes” now earn their “degrees within six years of entering school.”

Indeed, the released data revealed a 79% graduation rate for scholarship athletes that arrived on college campuses in 2001. The rate was one percentage point higher than the four year average for the athletes who entered school from 1998-2001 and just one point shy of the NCAA stated goal of 80%.

Wieberg goes on to note that three of the women’s basketball programs that made the final four last March had 100%, four year graduation rates. More impressively, Wieberg indicates that a total of 79 women’s basketball programs had perfect four year graduation rates.

The news was not quite so positive on the men’s side. Last year’s men’s basketball Cinderella, Davidson, did reach the century mark, but it was just one of 27 men’s programs to match the 100%, four year graduation rate.

In fact, the numbers for women’s sports dwarf those of the men. On the NCAA site one finds that the only women’s sport below the 80 percent target goal set by the NCAA was bowling (68%).

The Negatives
Moving further down the not-so positive meter, Wieberg notes that just three of the current USA Today Top 25 football teams could match the overall college figure of 79%: Vanderbilt (91%), Wake Forest (83%), and Texas Tech (79%). Others in the Top 25 mentioned by Wieberg include Oklahoma which posted a 46% four-year grad rate, topped, barely, by Georgia and Georgia Tech at 48%.

In addition to the weaker performance of college football programs, further analysis reveals that “more than a quarter of the 300-plus Division I men’s basketball programs had four-year grad rates beneath 50%.” Wieberg notes further, “The numbers lagged in particular in the nation’s top six conferences — the Atlantic Coast, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific 10 and Southeastern — where 30 of 73 basketball programs graduated fewer than half their players.”

More Revealing

A year ago, the NCAA created a new measure of academic progress called the “Graduation Success Rate” (GSR). This new calculation utilized a different mechanism for tracking outgoing transfers.

In the past, non-graduates of a university were counted against a school, reducing the institutions graduation rate. Under the new method, these transfers are not counted.

The result is to treat students who transfer out of one school to another as if they never existed. This strange process has dramatically improved the overall numbers for schools.

Scout.com, one of the top college sport sites reports the impact of the new calculation method. Examining last year’s numbers, the site stipulates: “For all Division I-A student-athletes in all sports combined, the overall student-athlete graduation rate …. would have been 63% under the old method, but it rises to 78% under the new GSR method.”

The site stops short of citing the statistical change as being designed to make big time college athletic programs look significantly better. However, the impact has been substantial, one that has artificially helped the NCAA come much closer to its goal of reaching the 80% graduation rate goal.

Other Conflicting Numbers
Perhaps of more importance still is the graduation rates quoted seem to be at odds with another NCAA measurement tool to determine academic success, the Academic Progress Rate (APR). The APR is designed to examine retention rates as well as ongoing eligibility rates even while taking into account graduation rates.

Wieberg notes that Oklahoma’s football team posted a 942 APR for the four years ending with the 2006-07 school year. That is considered a solid number – a rate of 925 is the fundamental benchmark goal.

In addition, the NCAA touts the 925 figure as projecting a 60% graduation rate. The explanation given here is that a school’s APR is not negatively impacted by those players who leave school early in good academic standing in an attempt to turn pro.

But given Oklahoma’s numbers, the graduation percentage simply does not jive with the APR standard measurement. This brings us back to our concerns with the formula changes used by the NCAA, formulas that seem to inflate the graduation rate artificially.

We applaud the NCAA for setting their goals – however, changing calculation methods in mid-stream has us thinking that the change in formula has hastened the process of schools reaching the original 80% goal.

Flickr photos courtesy of Cheryl and Billy A.