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 the 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 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.[8]
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 do not earn an Academic Progress Rate above specific benchmarks face penalties ranging from scholarship reductions to more severe sanctions like restrictions on scholarships and practice time.[8]
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.[9]
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.[10]
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 Connecticut. The Huskies lost two scholarships for the 2011–12 season due to APR violations.[10] UConn would be barred from postseason play in 2012–13 due to APR penalties.[11]
NCAA college presidents met in Indianapolis in August 2011 to discuss a reform on the APR because of the poor academic performance by student athletes. The NCAA Board of Directors, on Thursday August 11, voted to ban Division I athletic teams from postseason play if their four-year academic progress rate failed to meet 930.[12]
The new policy will begin taking effect in the 2012-13 academic year, however institutions will have a period of 3 years to align their APR with the new standard. The postseason restrictions for the next few years are as follows:
2012-13 postseason: 900 four-year average or 930 average over most recent two years
2013-14 postseason: either 930 four-year average or 940 average over most recent two years
2015-2016 postseason and beyond: 930 four-year average[13]
Currently, the APR benchmark for postseason play is 900 so this is a significant increase and could result in serious consequences for some institutions that fail to improve their APR.
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 said there's 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." [12]
Some NCAA institutions participate in football leagues, other than the BCS, which are organized by the NCAA and these reforms would apply to. In the 2011-12 academic year there were 17 teams in the FBS league with APRs below 930 and 37 teams in the FCS league. If these programs do not find a way to improve their APR then they will suffer postseason bans.[14]
The APR's flaws are highlighted in men's basketball. "Syracuse's Jim Boeheim suffered the two-scholarship hit last summer, and in doing so publicly upbraided the APR for taking into account the departures of Eric Devendorf, Jonny Flynn and Paul Harris for the NBA draft, all three of whom left campus to prepare for the NBA event without fulfilling their spring semester requirements." [15] Many college basketball players leave before they graduate, and the ones that leave in bad academic standing, cause the APR to go down. This issue is seen throughout college basketball.
To exemplify this phenomenon for collegiate basketball, if the 930 postseason ban had been in effect for the 2011-12 season then 99 teams would have received postseason bans.[16] Clearly, the new postseason policy must become a high priority for basketball programs or many of them will not be competing in NCAA sponsored championships.
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. Compiling college athletes’graduation rates stemmed partly from press coverage that 76 to 92 percent of professional athletes lacked college degrees and from revelations that some were functionally illiterate. [17] 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. (The APR is calculated based only on scholarship players already, not walk-ons) Numerous other sources, from sports conferences to schools themselves, document much lower graduation rates for college football and men’s basketball and baseball players than for general students.Compounding matters is that only about 57 percent of all college students complete a bachelor’s degree in six years.
Last Edited: 5/4/2013 3:36:10 PM by JSF
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