Menu
Download the app

SBJ subscribers – Enhance your experience with the revamped iOS app

Opinion

The NCAA’s miraculous graduation rate!

It is correct to recognize transfers who graduate, but the flawed formula needs to be revisited.

During the weeks-long buildup to college football’s biggest bowl games last December, it was hard not to notice that many of the teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 were having a lot more success on the gridiron than their players were in the classroom.

Because the primary mission of the NCAA is to maintain athletes as an integral part of the of the student body, a look at each school’s Federal Graduation Rate (FGR) is a good starting place. Athletes who remain at the same university from their freshman year until graduation have at least four years to become immersed in academic and campus life. They also progress through a curriculum that is consistent with intellectual growth and career goals.

The FGRs of schools in the AP Top 25 poll reveal that football players are much less likely to graduate from the school they first attend than are regular students. This is especially true at schools with a high academic ranking. For instance, the FGR for the student body at Michigan is 90%. The football team, however, has a FGR of only 59%. The average FGR gap for all 25 teams was 11 percentage points.

In 2003, college presidents urged the NCAA to introduce the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) because, they argued, the FGR is not a “fair measure” of athletes’ graduation success. The crux of this argument is that athletes who transfer to another college or university in good academic standing, and graduate within a four-year limit, should be included in the second school’s graduation rate and removed from the previous school’s cohort.

Including transfers in graduation statistics is an important addition because it acknowledges the “persistence” of athletes who move from one school to another while working toward a degree. However, contrary to NCAA rhetoric, the GSR is not a better measure of “educational” success than the FGR because of the latter’s focus on maintaining athletes as an integral part of the student body.

The NCAA is right to recognize transfers who graduate. However, the GSR may be mathematically flawed. The NCAA contends that athletes who depart from a school while in good academic standing (Left Eligibles) are passed from that school’s cohort to another’s. This implies that almost all athletes who leave one school in good academic standing will become transfers into another school.

This in fact is not the case. A rather large number of athletes who have the academic credentials to transfer may decide not to do so for a variety of reasons. For instance, some may leave college to turn professional. Others who are disillusioned with academic life may leave college to pursue employment.

Regardless, the NCAA treats these “missing athletes” as if they do not exist. As a result, these missing athletes are simply removed from the new cohort’s denominator, thus grossly inflating the NCAA’s graduation success ratings. By some estimates, the GSR may be inflated by seven to 11 percentage points above the FGR rate when applied to all sports, both male and female.

If the GSR’s methodological problems are minor or non-existent, the NCAA’s GSR for football is truly miraculous. For instance, Notre Dame’s 95% FGR for the entire student body is only one point above the 94% GSR of the football team! Of the AP Top 25 college football teams, 17 have higher GSRs than their student bodies. Alabama’s FGR for students is 67% while the magical GSR for the football team is 80%. 

Skeptics are likely to ask how all of this is possible when studies initiated by the NCAA have found that big-time football players must give 40 hours a week to sports during the season and practice year round. The answer to this question, they argue, has a great deal to do with academic fraud in athletic counseling centers, and friendly faculty who give high grades for little or no work. There is nothing new about this kind of behavior. But the NCAA’s inflated graduation success rate may also play a role.

Regardless of differences of opinion regarding the best way to measure graduation rates of college athletes, it seems reasonable to conclude that both the FGR and the GSR — if the latter is valid and reliable — could provide vital information on how athletes make their journey through college. However, it is disturbing to watch representatives of the NCAA extol the virtues of the GSR as if it were religious dogma without acknowledging the FGR and its emphasis on student retention.

Allen Sack, a professor emeritus at the University of New Haven, played football on Notre Dame’s 1966 national championship football team. Gerald Gurney is assistant professor of education at the University of Oklahoma and past president of the National Association of Academic Advisers for Athletics.

Questions about OPED guidelines or letters to the editor? Email editor Jake Kyler at jkyler@sportsbusinessjournal.com

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2019/05/06/Opinion/SackGurney.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2019/05/06/Opinion/SackGurney.aspx

CLOSE