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Wiki #5:starter article

Origin

The mandatory publication of graduation rates came into affect in 1990 as a consequence of the "Student Right-to-Know Act," which attempted to create an environment in which universities would become more devoted to academics and holding athletes accountable for academic success. However, the assumptions that athletes under-perform in the classroom compared to non-athletes started long before the 1990's. One hundred years prior to the "Student Right-to-Know Act," in 1890, elite university presidents and professors denounced college athletics as being counterproductive to education. Moreover, in the years following the Civil Rights Movement, with more attention on social equalities, universities began to adopt more universal acceptance standards, allowing college coaches to recruit athletes that hadn't proven themselves in the classroom. Eventually, it became apparent that many student athletes could not keep up with the academic demands of their institutions, in turn leading to the requirements on the NCAA to report the academic success of its member institutions.

Potential Misuses of the System

While the numbers represented in the APR have a certain significance there can be misrepresentations for people unfamiliar with what the APR is showing. For example, the APR only applies to students that receive athletic financial aid which is by no means all varsity athletes at a university. Additionally, when calculating the APR for a particular institution the NCAA counts an athlete that leaves before graduation to pursue a professional athletic career as a negative for the university even though this is generally seen as a lucrative and successful outcome. Another common misuse of the data is to compare APR results between universities. This is usually not a valid comparison unless it is viewed alongside the graduation rates for non athletes at the institution. For example, one institution may have an APR representing that only 50% of athletes graduate which seems like athletes are under performing at the university. However, if the graduation rate for non athletes is also 50% then the low graduation rate for the athletes is not an athletic problem but a university wide problem; illustrating how data in the APR needs to be properly understood before conclusions can be drawn.

Benefits of the APR

The APR holds educational institutions accountable for the academic performance of their student athletes. While there is some debate as to whether athletes under perform compared to their non athlete classmates, the APR attempts to prevent that from happening. The APR doesn't always tell the whole story but it does give some indication into the proficiency of a university at moving its athletes towards graduation.

Wiki #6 revisions of article

According to the NCAA, the Academic Progress Rate (APR) is defined as a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates.

Background

The mandatory publication of graduation rates came into effect in 1990 as a consequence of the "Student Right-to-Know Act," which attempted to create an environment in which universities would become more devoted to academics and holding athletes accountable for academic success. However, the graduation rates established by the NCAA showed poor results, for example, reporting that among student-athletes who entered college between 1993 and 1996 only 51 percent of football players graduated within 6 years and 41 percent of basketball players. Feeling pressure to improve these poor rates the NCAA instituted new reforms in 2004, including the Academic Progress Rate, a new method for gauging the academic progress of student-athletes. It was put into place in order to aid in the NCAA's goal for student-athletes to graduate with meaningful degrees, preparing them for life. The primary data collector for APR statistics is Thomas Paskus, the Principal Research Scientist for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

Functions

The APR measures how scholarship student-athletes are performing term by term throughout the school year. It is a collective team measurement based upon how individual team members do academically. Teams that don’t achieve the required APR of 925 are subject to sanctions. The NCAA works closely with the schools that do not meet the threshold in order to help them improve. While eligibility requirements make the individual student-athlete accountable, the Academic Progress Rate creates a level of responsibility for the University.

Measurement

Teams that fail to achieve an APR score of 925 - equivalent to a 50% graduation rate - may be penalized. A perfect score is 1000. The scores are calculated as follows:

Each student-athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one retention point for staying in school and one eligibility point for being academically eligible. A team’s total points are divided by points possible and then multiplied by one thousand to equal the team’s Academic Progress Rate score.

Example:

A Division I Football Bowl Subdivision team awards the full complement of 85 grants-in-aid. If 80 student-athletes remain in school and academically eligible, three remain in school but are academically ineligible and two drop out while they are academically ineligible, the team earns 163 of 170 possible points for that term. Divide 163 by 170 and multiply by 1,000 to determine that the team’s Academic Progress Rate for that term is 959.

The NCAA calculates the rate as a rolling, four-year figure that takes into account all the points student-athletes could earn for remaining in school and academically eligible during that period. Teams that record an Academic Progress Rate below a specific benchmark, face penalties ranging from scholarship reductions to more severe sanctions.

Sanctions

Teams that score below 925 and have a student-athlete who both failed academically and left school can lose scholarships (up to 10 percent of their scholarships each year) under the immediate penalty structure.

Teams with Academic Progress Rates below 900 face additional sanctions, increasing in severity for each consecutive year the team fails to meet the standard.

Year 1: a public warning letter for poor performance

Year 2: restrictions on scholarships and practice time

Year 3: loss of postseason competition for the team (such as a bowl game or the men's basketball tournament)

Year 4: restricted membership status for an institution. The school's entire athletics program is penalized and will not be considered a part of Division I.

The first penalties under the APR system were scheduled to be announced in December 2005. Starting with the 2008–09 academic year, bans from postseason competition were added to the penalty structure. The most severe penalty available is a one-year suspension of NCAA membership, which has not yet been assessed as of 2010–11.

Prior to 2010–11, only four teams had received postseason bans. The results of the NCAA's APR report for that year, which covered 2006–07 through 2009–10, saw eight teams receive that penalty—five in men's basketball and three in football. Most notably, Southern University became the first school ever to receive APR-related postseason bans in two sports. The highest-profile penalty in that year's cycle was handed down to defending NCAA men's basketball champion UConn. The Huskies lost two scholarships for the 2011–12 season due to APR violations.

Reform

NCAA presidents met in Indianapolis in August 2011 to discuss a reform on the APR. The NCAA Board of Directors, on Thursday August 11th, voted to ban Division I athletic teams from postseason play if their four-year academic progress rate failed to meet 930.

Currently, the APR benchmark is set at 925, which predicts approximately a 50 percent graduation rate. Only if a team falls below 900 three years in a row could they potentially face postseason bans, as well as scholarship and practice restrictions.

However the new policy calls for a more immediate and straightforward solution, if the team APR falls below 930 then that team is banned from postseason play, even if it's one of the top teams in the country. And it doesn't appear as if there will be any appeal process.

Reform Effects on Football

There are many questions regarding how the NCAA will enforce the new policy for football. The Bowl Championship Series is its own entity and decides the college football postseason, thus making them the governing body for college football. President Gary Ransdell expressed uncertainty on how the new standard relates to the BCS, "The BCS is an independently run enterprise, yet it involves NCAA member institutions," he said. "So does this 930 rule also determine eligibility for BCS games? I think that's yet to be ironed out."

Adjustments and Exceptions

The NCAA does adjust APR, on a student-by-student basis, in two circumstances. One exception that can be made, is for student-athletes who leave prior to graduation, while in good academic standing, to pursue a professional career. Another is for student-athletes who transfer to another school while meeting minimum academic requirements and student-athletes who return to graduate at a later date. In the 2010–11 cycle, the NCAA granted nearly 700 APR adjustments in the latter category, out of a total of over 6,400 Division I teams. Nearly half of the adjustments were for baseball players.

APR compared to FGR

Another indicator of the academic performance of student athletes is the Federal Graduation Rate, which is published by the university. In computing the FGR, the only data that is relevant to the calculation, is whether or not the student-athlete graduates within six years of enrolling in the institution. This differs from the APR because the FGR makes no distinction of the purpose a student has for leaving and whether or not they leave a university in good academic standing. If a student leaves their enrolled university to pursue a professional athletic career this counts the same under the FGR as someone who leaves because they failed out of school; on the other hand, by the APR standards a student that leaves while still in good academic standing receives one point out of two which distinguishes them from someone that left because of academic failure. With that in mind, FGR rates usually reflect a value lower than the APR at elite athletic institutions which consistently send athletes to the professional leagues prior to graduation. This doesn't make one rate better than the other; rather both rates can be analyzed together to provide a more accurate depiction of what is happening at the university.

Potential Misinterpretations

While the statistics that represent the APR hold a certain significance, they can promote misinterpretations for people unfamiliar with what the APR is showing. For example, the APR only applies to students that receive athletic financial aid, which is not all varsity athletes at a university. Another common misuse of the data occurs when APR results are compared between universities. This is usually not a valid comparison unless it is viewed alongside the graduation rates for non-athletes at the institution. For example, one institution may have an APR representing that only 50% of athletes are on track to graduate, which makes it seem as though athletes are under performing at the university. However, if the graduation rate for non-athletes is also 50% then the low graduation rate for the athletes is not an athletic problem but a university wide problem. Furthermore, it is not always relevant to compare APR scores across universities because the academic workloads differ between universities. For example, at some high performing academic universities freshman struggle with eligibility because the workload is hard to deal with initially, but in the end, those students prove to have academic success.