Grad Rates #1

[50's PONY]

Football grad rate is on the rise
By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY
College football is cleaning up its act in the classroom.
Players in the NCAA's top-tier Division I-A are more likely than ever to leave school with degrees, according to the latest survey of graduation rates compiled by the federal government and released Monday by the NCAA.

A record 57% of I-A players who entered college on scholarship in 1997 graduated within six years, the survey showed. That's three points better than the previous class and a nine-point jump in the sport in four years.

The colleges' other bell-cow sport continued to lag, however. The rate for men's basketball players stayed at 44% across Division I, and it dipped to 39% for I-A — a 117-school subdivision that features the nation's biggest sports spenders and accounts for 58 of the last 60 berths in the NCAA tournament's Final Four.

Women's basketball also waned, its grad rate dipping from 66% a year ago to 64% across Division I. There, as in the men's game, the rate for black players rose a point while the rate for white players dropped.

"Basketball overall continues to remain a challenge. I don't know if there's anything specific about the sport that would account for that," NCAA President Myles Brand said. "I believe that our academic reform initiatives should be of some consequence there."

The NCAA has enacted new guidelines for incoming athletes and toughened their progress-toward-degree requirements. They'll have to complete 40% of their graduation requirements by the end of their second year, 60% by their third year and 80% by their fourth year to remain eligible to compete.

Overall, Monday's new grad rates painted a favorable picture in Division I. The 62% rate for athletes matched the previous year's, a decade-long high, and was better than the 60% rate of the overall student body at the same schools.

Black athletes, in particular, fared better than their counterparts — male athletes graduating at a 48% rate (compared with 36% for blacks in the overall student body) and female athletes at 62% (compared with 47% in the overall student body).

By the NCAA's own account, the rates are conservative. As compiled by the U.S. Department of Education, they don't factor in such things as transfers and players leaving school early to turn pro. The NCAA will compute and release its own rates, expected to be an average of 10% higher, starting next summer.

The NCAA also is drawing up a separate academic progress rate, measuring individual teams' success in keeping athletes in school and keeping them eligible or graduating them. Score low there, show up poorly in the new grad rates, and teams will face unprecedented new penalties. The lightest sanction — barring a team from replacing a scholarship player who leaves while academically ineligible — could first be applied in the fall of 2005. Programs that habitually perform poorly could draw scholarship and recruiting cuts as early as the fall of 2007 and postseason bans by 2008-09.

Virginia leads way in grad rates

Reshuffling college football's latest BCS rankings

[huntnfish]

It's about time!

[Bergermeister]

Do we get any points on the scoreboard for our graduation rate?