INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The NCAA says football and men’s basketball players are becoming more productive in
the classroom.
A
one-year measurement, released Thursday, showed that 70 percent or more
of Division I athletes who were freshmen in 2005-06 in those sports
earned their diplomas — the first time that has happened since the
governing body started collecting data 11 years ago for the annual
Graduation Success Rate.
Athletes in men’s basketball graduated at
a rate of 74 percent, a 6 percentage-point jump over the 2004-05
freshman class. Football Bowl Subdivision athletes improved their scores
by 1 percentage point over the previous year, hitting 70 percent.
The records aren’t confined to football and basketball.
Numbers
compiled over four years, from the freshmen classes of 2002-03 through
2005-06, matched last year’s record-high of 80 percent. The federal
graduation rate also remained steady, matching the one-year record-high
of 65 percent last year. That was also 2 percentage points above the
overall student body, the same disparity the government reported last
year.
Critics sometimes contend the NCAA’s numbers are skewed
because it uses a different calculation from the federal government.
While both measure graduation over a six-year period, the feds do not
count the performance of transfer students regardless of whether they
earn a diploma.
NCAA President Mark Emmert believes the
improvements can be explained by the NCAA’s push for tougher academic
standards over the past decade.
Back in 2003, the NCAA
strengthened the eligibility requirements for incoming freshmen and
college upperclassmen. It required high school seniors to complete 16
core courses and upperclassmen to finish a higher percentage of course
work toward a degree to remain eligible.
Last year, Emmert pushed
for — and got — the board of directors to approve tougher penalties
including postseason bans for teams that don’t make the grade on the
annual Academic Progress Report, which is released in the spring. The
Connecticut men’s basketball team is the first major school in one of
the two big sports to miss the cutline and will be ineligible for
postseason play this season.
Not all of the numbers were better.
The overall grad rate for the 2005-06 freshman class was 81 percent, down one percentage point from the
previous one-year total.
But the most notable numbers came in the two sports that traditionally lag behind the other sports.
The
NCAA has seen an 18 percentage-point increase in men’s basketball, a 21
percentage-point increase among black basketball players and a
7-percentage point increase in FBS players over the past 11 years.
Every
sub-group measured by the government, with the exception of white men,
shows athletes graduate at a higher rate than their peers. White male
athletes trail their non-athletic peers by 1 percentage point.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.