Oct. 16, 2008

Academic Success Rate Report

CANYON, Texas - West Texas A&M student-athletes are posting academic success and graduation rates at or above the national standard, as released by the NCAA Tuesday.

Nationally, more than seven out of 10 Division II student-athletes are graduating, according to the latest data from Division II's Academic Success Rate.

The Academic Success Rate tracks student-athletes, regardless of whether they received financial aid for athletics, over a six-year period from the date they arrived on campus.

Of those sports performing above the national norm, WTAMU's women's cross country heads the school's list, with a 100 percent Academic Success Rate over the period specified. This compares with a national average of 80 percent. Likewise, other WTAMU women's programs, such as soccer (83% compared with 81%) and volleyball (82% compared with 79%) also reflected rates much higher than the national norm.

On the men's side, basketball (63% compared with 58%), soccer (68% compared with 68%) and baseball (67% compared with 68%) all performed near or above the national standard.

"I believe the Academic Success Rate is a much more accurate barometer as to how NCAA Division II schools perform academically than is the Federal Graduation Rate," said WT Director of Athletics Michael McBroom. "Our objective at WT is straightforward: to win championships with student-athletes who will graduate from the university. Our strategic plan calls for an Academic Success Rate of 60% or greater for every sport by 2013. While I am pleased that 9 of our 13 teams currently meet this benchmark, the full effects of our Academic Success program will not be seen for several more years.

"We have outstanding faculty at WT, as well as a good support system that assists all students with academic progress."

Data from the most recent entering class of 2001 reveal a 71% graduation rate for student-athletes, up from 69 percent for the 1999 and 2000 classes. The three-year aggregate is at 70%. The three-year ASR is 80% for female student-athletes and 63% for males.

This is the third year that Division II has collected ASR data that figure transfer and non-scholarship student-athletes into the calculation. The Division II Presidents Council advocated development of the ASR as a more accurate alternative to the federally mandated graduation-rate methodology that records only scholarship student-athletes and does not take transfers into account.

As a result, the ASR reveals graduation rates that are much higher than the federal calculation. The ASR for the three-year cohort is 15 percentage points higher than the federal rate (70% to 55%) and 16 points higher (71% to 55%) for the entering class of 2001.

The ASR is similar to Division I's Graduation Success Rate, though while both rates account for transfers in good academic standing, the Division II ASR goes a step further by accounting for all non-scholarship student-athletes (the Division I rate includes only scholarship athletes). That means the ASR captures more than twice the enrolled student-athletes as the federal rate, largely because more than 25,000 non-scholarship student-athletes are included in the three-year NCAA Division II calculation.

"The Academic Success Rate uniquely reflects the success of intercollegiate athletics at the Division II level," said Presidents Council Chair Stephen Jordan, president at Metropolitan State College of Denver. "The philosophy of graduation-rate collection in Divisions I and II is the same regarding how transfers factor into the equation, but Division II relies so heavily on non-scholarship student-athletes that it was necessary for us to add that component in our calculation."

While the ASR methodology is not applied to the general student body (the U.S. Department of Education has resisted NCAA requests to do so), even the federally mandated methodology reveals student-athlete success above that of the student body. For the last 10 years in fact, Division II student-athletes have federal graduation rates that are significantly higher than their student-body counterparts. For the entering class of 2001, the difference was nine percentage points (55 percent to 46 percent).

The ASR only amplifies that student-athlete academic success.

"These data are particularly satisfying in the context of the profile of most Division II institutions," Jordan said. "Unlike the many Division I schools that have rigorous entrance criteria, most Division II public institutions are by virtue of state law open enrollment, where only a high school diploma or GED is required. Many Division II schools also cater to a regional constituency. Thus, the Division II student profile often is a nontraditional student, and many in fact are first-generation college attendees."

"Within the division, we have always known that there are so many good students in Division II," said Sunshine State Conference Commissioner Mike Marcil, president of the Division II Conference Commissioners Association. "But we haven't been as good at communicating that message outside of the division. Now we have the ASR data to show everyone. The academic success of Division II student-athletes clearly supports the principles that are inherent in the Division II strategic-positioning platform. These numbers also help tell the story of a Division II student-athlete - and by all accounts it's a good-news story."

The news is also good on a sport-by-sport basis. ASRs on average are about 15 percentage points higher than the federal rate in every sport.

"Interestingly in Division II, we're not seeing specific sports that are outliers or under-performers in the ASR data," said Division II Vice President Mike Racy. "While there's always room for improvement, the upward trend we see in these data is across the board for all sports."

Overall, 275 of 292 Division II institutions (94.2%) submitted data for calculation of the ASR. The NCAA intends to build a four-year rolling average for reporting of the ASR, as is done with reporting of the federal graduation-rate data.

Participation in the Division II ASR is an obligation of membership, though a penalty structure created for noncompliance will not be activated until 2011 to ensure that schools have adequate advance notice. That structure requires members failing to provide ASR data to forfeit Division II enhancement funds the next year. Further, schools that do not submit data during any two years of a five-year period must forgo funds for three consecutive years. Enhancement funds are part of a revenue-distribution model for the Division II membership that includes an equal distribution of dollars to every active member school.