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NCAA Academic Report Penalizes Small Schools
May 08, 2008 03:05 PM
by
findingDulcinea Staff
by Denis Cummings
The NCAA has released its 2008 Academic Progress Rate report, finding that the majority of underperforming schools are small and lacking in academic support for athletes.
The NCAA has released its 2008 Academic Progress Rate report, finding that the majority of underperforming schools are small and lacking in academic support for athletes.
30-Second Summary
The APR was created in 2005 to hold schools accountable for the academic performances of their athletes by sanctioning those teams that don’t meet certain standards.
The NCAA assigns an APR score based on players staying academically eligible and remaining at the school. A perfect score is 1000; schools that fall under 925, the equivalent of a 50 percent graduation rate, are eligible to receive penalties including postseason bans and loss of scholarships.
This year’s APR, which covers a four-year period between 2003-04 and 2006-07, reported that 493 teams fell below the 925 score. The NCAA issued penalties to 218 teams from 123 schools.
The majority of teams penalized were football, baseball and men’s basketball. “The biggest concern is in men's basketball,” said NCAA President Miles Brand, who has formed a subcommittee to determine how the sport can improve.
Thirty-seven football teams were penalized, but just two—Washington State and Kansas—were from BCS conferences. For many, this illustrates the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Big schools can afford academic support that keeps athletes eligible without necessarily providing a quality education. As a result, many small schools believe the APR has created a “class warfare” that favors big schools.
Most academic reform experts are unconvinced that the APR affects the way in which big-time athletics are run, including David Ridpath of the Drake Group. “People in college athletics are very smart,” he said, “they'll find a way to get around the APR.”
The NCAA assigns an APR score based on players staying academically eligible and remaining at the school. A perfect score is 1000; schools that fall under 925, the equivalent of a 50 percent graduation rate, are eligible to receive penalties including postseason bans and loss of scholarships.
This year’s APR, which covers a four-year period between 2003-04 and 2006-07, reported that 493 teams fell below the 925 score. The NCAA issued penalties to 218 teams from 123 schools.
The majority of teams penalized were football, baseball and men’s basketball. “The biggest concern is in men's basketball,” said NCAA President Miles Brand, who has formed a subcommittee to determine how the sport can improve.
Thirty-seven football teams were penalized, but just two—Washington State and Kansas—were from BCS conferences. For many, this illustrates the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
Big schools can afford academic support that keeps athletes eligible without necessarily providing a quality education. As a result, many small schools believe the APR has created a “class warfare” that favors big schools.
Most academic reform experts are unconvinced that the APR affects the way in which big-time athletics are run, including David Ridpath of the Drake Group. “People in college athletics are very smart,” he said, “they'll find a way to get around the APR.”
Headline Links: NCAA releases APR
The APR results could lead to scholarship losses for 150 teams, and possible postseason bans for schools that don’t improve next season. San Jose State was hit the hardest, with its men’s basketball team losing two scholarships and its football team facing a nine-scholarship loss and a postseason ban if it doesn’t improve.
Source: ESPN (Associated Press)
The NCAA’s press release cites across-the-board improvements from last year. NCAA President Miles Brand believes this shows that the APR is encouraging a commitment to academics: “We want to change the behaviors of the teams and the institutions and the athletic program so we’re all headed toward the success of student-athletes on the field and in the classroom.”
Source: NCAA.org
Background: The creation of the APR
Facing criticism that its academic standards were too lenient and inadequately-enforced, the NCAA created the APR in 2005 and announced that teams falling below its minimum score would be punished. Inside Higher Ed identified a number of potential deficiencies in the APR when it was announced, predicting that schools would “find ways to evade much of this legislation through soft courses and majors, overly zealous academic advising and similar maneuvers.”
Source: Inside Higher Ed
The NCAA’s Web site explains how the APR is calculated and how penalties are accessed.
Source: NCAA.org
Reactions: NCAA looks to fix men’s basketball
Men’s basketball was hardest his by the report, accounting for almost a quarter of all the underperforming teams. The NCAA formed a subcommittee to discuss ways to improve men’s basketball and will have a report by next fall. It is likely the committee will recommend that schools invest more in academic support, fund summer school classes for athletes and be more careful in firing coaches.
Source: The Sporting News
Opinion & Analysis: How effective is the APR?
The New York Times’ Pete Thamel attributes passing APR grades entirely to money. Big programs can afford to provide academic support to its athletes, while smaller programs struggle to keep up. San Jose State football coach Dick Tomey, whose team could be penalized nine scholarships, says, “There’s such a difference between the B.C.S. schools and those who are not … it highlights financial things like not being able to throw money at the problem and solve it very quickly.”
Source: The New York Times (free registration may be required)
The Associated Press’s Tim Dahlberg thinks the APR can be misleading, as it’s simple to manipulate academic success and graduation rates through forgiving professors and easy classes. For example, at the 26,000-student University of Michigan there are 176 General Studies majors, 58 of them are football players.
Source: International Herald Tribune (Associated Press)
Of the 493 underperforming teams, only 218 were penalized. The NCAA granted exceptions for a variety of reasons, including schools designated “low-resource,” teams whose academically ineligible players didn’t leave the school, and teams that showed they had plans to improve. Richard Southall, the director of the College Sports Research Institute, was critical of the improvement plan exemption, comparing it to “having a midnight curfew for your kids and now it's 12:05. Are you going to say, 'Well they were close.’ And are you going to talk to your kids and say ‘do you have a plan for this not being a problem next Friday.’” David Ridpath of the Drake Group doesn't thinks the APR will amount to much. “I don’t see this as any significant change,” he said, “It just seems like lip service.”
Source: The State
Josh Centor of Double-A Zone, the NCAA’s official blog, calls the release of the APR the “academic Super Bowl.” He believes that the APR’s critics would be slamming the NCAA regardless of what the results were, arguing that the APR has “infiltrated the Division I nomenclature and is having a positive effect.”
Source: NCAA Double-A Zone
Reference: APR data and academic reform groups
The 2008 Academic Progress Reports can be found on the NCAA’s Web site. It includes school-by-school reports, which feature APR scores for each team, along with national averages for each sport. It also lists penalties and public recognition awards by school and sport.
Source: NCAA.org
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