The NCAA News - News and Features

The NCAA News -- October 12, 1998

Clearinghouse's image improves with function

Changes resulting in better service

BY GARY T. BROWN
STAFF WRITER

It used to be popular to poke fun at the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse.

It was new in 1993, mysterious, unknown. It was a dramatic departure from the old process of determining if a student met initial-eligibility requirements and a handy target for the disgruntled when the new process bogged -- or broke -- down.

People said it was cumbersome, slow, inefficient, inconsistent. For a while, there was even some momentum to perhaps do away with the clearinghouse altogether.

But that was then. What had been a constant clamor for change has now become more of a quiet calm of content.

Now, very few callers are greeted with busy signals. There seems to be a better understanding of what is expected from high schools, member institutions and prospective student- athletes. And the notion of what constitutes a core course isn't as mysterious as it once was.

Perhaps the settling dust is from initial-eligibility standards having remained unchanged for a period of time. Perhaps enough time has passed for high schools, colleges and universities to become comfortable with the process. Or maybe the clearinghouse has adjusted with the times, finally taking on the positive luster that the creators thought it would from the beginning.

If it is the latter, there is good reason for it. There have been many people associated with the project who have helped make sure that despite ever-changing legislation and an astonishing workload, the clearinghouse remains a dynamic entity aimed at access for student-athletes without an excess of red tape.

Additional phone lines and equipment have led to fewer than 1 percent of calls to the clearinghouse being abandoned. E-mail access to member institutions also has increased communication. And a new system that more intimately involves high-school principals in core-course review has drawn rave reviews.

In life before the clearinghouse, high schools filled out 48-H forms and sent them along to colleges and universities that requested them. A request for transcripts and test scores would follow, and then the prospect either would be declared eligible or not depending on the particular college's review of whether the prospect met existing eligibility standards.

High schools seldom, if ever, knew whether putting "woodshop" or "physical education" on the 48-H was good or bad because colleges and universities never provided any feedback.

That all changed with the advent of the clearinghouse, which became not only the vehicle for core-course feedback, but the apparent driver. At that time, high schools sent completed 48-H forms to the clearinghouse rather than to requesting institutions. The clearinghouse reviewed the submissions and entered the courses that by title appeared to be acceptable.

For those that had "unknown" or questionable titles, the high school was asked to provide additional information. Though the goal was to reach consistency on a national basis as to what core courses were acceptable and could be used to meet the Divisions I and II requirements, the result was confusion.

Calvin Symons, who has served as the director of the clearinghouse since its inception, said the change of pace in the process confused institutions that were accustomed to providing their own interpretations of what was core.

"Colleges were processing things according to their interpretation of NCAA regulations," said Symons, "but they were doing their own editing. The high schools usually didn't receive any feedback on what editing was being done by the colleges.

"When the clearinghouse came into the mix, it was the first time that a student, after paying a fee and submitting all the documentation, received an official determination of initial-eligibility status. And they'd look at it and wonder why such and such a course wasn't counting as core. A lot of questions starting filtering down to the high schools then about how the forms were being filled out."

That, Symons said, led to an assumption that the clearinghouse was a radically different -- and maybe not so welcome -- entity. There were instances, in fact, when the brother or sister of a student who had been certified as a qualifier by an institution in the old process was not certified in the new process despite having a nearly identical set of academic credentials.

"These types of cases," Symons said, "led the high schools to feel that we had changed the rules on them. But it really was just the difference between how initial eligibility was done in the early days and how the NCAA membership wanted it done now."

The curriculum police

The difference in initial eligibility had more to do with an evolving set of standards than it did with the clearinghouse itself.

Initially, one of the primary purposes of the clearinghouse was to set up a library of sorts to catalogue core courses for each high school -- and to make sure that all high schools and member institutions had access to the same information.

Charles N. Lindemenn, athletics director at Montana State University-Bozeman and chair of the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse Committee, said the original concept was to take information from high schools and process the information in determining a student's initial-eligibility status. The clearinghouse then would provide that decision to member institutions when interest in a particular prospect was expressed.

But Lindemenn said that information forced some disturbing news to the surface.

"We found, for example, that cosmetology was considered a lab science at a certain institution, or that remedial English was used as a core course at another," he said. "That led to people in academic requirements believing that we had some serious problems -- even breeches of faith perhaps -- with regard to what were being considered as core courses on certain campuses and what high schools had been led to believe was a core course.

"There was a fundamental distrust at that point among members of certain committees within the NCAA with regard to high schools and their integrity."

That led to the clearinghouse becoming as much a policing agency as a processor of student credentials. Lindemenn said there was some concern of whether the high schools fully understood what they were being asked to provide. Instances occurred in which high schools modified the way they presented information about a course to suggest that what they were offering did indeed fit the NCAA's criteria.

"At that point," Lindemenn said, "the direction to the clearinghouse was not to provide high schools with all of our criteria but instead make them submit what they offered and then let the clearinghouse determine if it met the core-course criteria."

That practice was not well received.

The clearinghouse was dubbed "the curriculum police." It now was in charge not just of keeping track of how many core courses a prospect had completed but also with determining what constituted a core course.

Symons said at the time it seemed to be the only way to accomplish what the membership wanted.

"Without having the ability to go out to each high school and evaluate the curriculum using the standards the NCAA membership had passed, you've got to be able to do something to make that first cut or determination in the thousands of core courses that are submitted," he said.

"The message from the Academic Requirements Committee and the NCAA staff was to direct the clearinghouse to make that first blush at what courses were going to be accepted and what courses weren't."

The reaction from high schools was that they were being told what they could or couldn't teach.

"The clearinghouse never intended to do that," Symons said. "We were trying to evaluate if the course on the 48-H met the NCAA's definition of a core course. Unfortunately, the tying of an individual student's case to whether a course does or doesn't meet that definition sometimes becomes an emotional issue. That simple question turns into an emotional quagmire because that student's eligibility hinges on it."

Changing standards

The clearinghouse also was troubled by continuing changes in initial-eligibility standards in its early years.

Within three years after the clearinghouse had been established, the NCAA had (among other things) raised the number of core courses from 11 to 13, introduced the fourth year of English requirement, introduced the sliding scale for qualifier and partial-qualifier status for Division I and established sequential math requirements for Division I.

"When we got into the clearinghouse business, we were talking about eligibility standards that are very different than they are today," said Patty Viverito, a member of the Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse Committee and commissioner of the Gateway Football Conference and senior associate commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference.

"It was certainly easier to achieve qualifier status before the time of the clearinghouse. But as time went on and those standards changed, that exponentially complicated the work of the clearinghouse. And much of the criticism that the clearinghouse has endured over time is really a criticism of the enhanced initial-eligibility standards and not what I call the plumbing of the clearinghouse operation."

The media made no such distinctions. The clearinghouse often was held up as the scapegoat for bumps in the process. Yet, according to Symons, those bumps often occurred because the clearinghouse wasn't being given the information it needed to process cases in a timely fashion.

"It seemed as though everyone had a horror story to tell," he said. "And they were being told to the press. But our confidentiality policies precluded us from discussing the particulars of any specific case. Today, we continue to be bound by confidentiality policies that protect each student's academic record."

Symons said the media still occasionally jabs at the operation. He said an article faulting the clearinghouse appeared in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated. Again, confidentiality prevented the complete story from being told.

"The majority of what's been printed out there just doesn't convey the whole story," he said.

What's working

A lot has unfolded for the better in recent years. Between an increased level of familiarity with the process at the high-school and college levels -- as well as at the clearinghouse level -- and tweaks to the process implemented by the committee, much has been done to calm previous anxieties.

Perhaps the most important move was a shift back to a greater reliance on high-school principals to become involved in the core-course review process.

Two years ago, the committee engaged in a summit with representatives from, among others, the National Federation of State High School Associations, the high-school principals association, the high-school counselors association and various NCAA committees to come to a more practical approach to core-course review.

"We realized that what we needed to do was to embrace high schools and come to a more common understanding of their problems as they related to ours," Lindemenn said. "Out of that meeting, we started to form an allegiance with one another."

Lindemenn said the trust gap was bridged during the discussion when both sides spoke openly of what parts of the process became pressure points. He said that if high-school principals were not placed in a situation in which they had to deal with an ineligible prospect, they treated the core-course review process very responsibly. The only time they were compromised, he said, was when an athlete failed to meet core-course criteria; when that happened, the administrator had to justify how it was that the high school had failed to put this prospect in a position where he or she could play.

"Principals wanted out of that situation as badly as we wanted them out of it," Lindemenn said. "We wanted to put principals in a position where they could be principled by dealing with core-course review absent the eligibility outcome instead of pre- or post-outcome. As soon as we got past that hurdle, it was clear to those of us on the committee that we had allies in high-school principals and they would indeed embrace the criteria very seriously. As soon as that happened, a lot of the barricades started coming down."

What was produced initially was the "NCAA Game Plan," which provided more guidance to high schools in providing information about core courses. After that came the "NCAA Playbook," which provided further specifications.

Now the clearinghouse does not scrutinize a core-course submission unless it falls into one of three categories: (1) The course title is similar to or suggests that the course contains instructional elements listed as not permitted in meeting the 75 percent core-course content requirement; (2) the course is being approved retroactively for a student who has already graduated; or (3) the course has been denied previously.

Lindemenn said that approach provides the high schools the autonomy they want while still giving the NCAA some control over the most common discrepancies.

"The playbook still involves forms but not nearly the amount of backup documentation," he said. "It's much more reliant on the ethics and good judgment of principals, and the response has been positive."

"Two years ago, this was probably the hottest topic for us," said Robert F. Kanaby, executive director of the National Federation of State High School Associations. "But when the determination of core courses was placed back in the hands of the high-school principal, that undoubtedly reestablished not only the lines of communication but it also underscored the trust factor between the parties involved."

Kanaby said he has received few calls this year regarding the clearinghouse operation, another indication perhaps that the storm has passed.

Viverito, too, said she has not received the usual calls asking for conference intervention in a particular case.

Some say it's too bad that the smoothed-out process couldn't have been implemented back when the clearinghouse was first established, but Viverito and Lindemenn agreed that many of the tinkerings, while seemingly obvious now, were not apparent during the early stages because there were so many unknowns about how the process was going to work.

"We had no way of predicting the level of involvement that institutions, parents and student-athletes were going to need," Viverito said. "But those early communications problems have improved every year. And now with the establishment of institutional lines, the improvement of phone access, the voice recorded messages, the ability for members to get information via modem -- those were not just service improvements but an indication of the clearinghouse becoming much more responsive to the types of communication that needed to go out to all those constituency groups."

And the word is indeed out. Now, as the first class the clearinghouse processed back in 1994 prepares to graduate, other classes know what they have to do -- and so do administrators involved in the initial-eligibility process.

"High schools are now doing the kind of counseling early on to get kids where they want to be at the end of their senior year and are more involved in picking approved core courses that they know will enable them to meet the requirements," Symons said. "Just the additional knowledge out there now that the clearinghouse is part of the process is a huge factor. Today's high-school seniors who were ninth graders back in 1993-94 have heard of it, and now they're doing the kinds of things that the NCAA would like to have them do.

"We've all learned how to work within the system."

Clearinghouse key dates

1993 -- Proposal to establish the clearinghouse adopted at the NCAA Convention.

1993 -- Contract to administer the clearinghouse issued to ACT.

1994 -- First class of prospective student-athletes certified.

1997 -- "Game Plan" lets high schools provide more detailed information about core courses.

1998 -- "Playbook" gives high-school principals more autonomy in core-course review.

Automatic English waivers ease process, anxiety

One of the most positive changes made in the initial-eligibility certification process involves the use of "automatic English waivers."

They are waivers that are applied to students who do not meet the 13 core-course requirement but reach an established academic threshold with a minimum core grade-point average and test score (for example, a 3.300 grade-point average and a 560 verbal score on the SAT).

In the past, those students would have been identified as not certified and would have had to apply for a waiver on the back end of the process. Now, with the automatic English waiver process, that prospect would move from "not certified" to "qualifier" in a matter of 24 to 48 hours and the student-athlete -- and his or her parents -- would never even know that he or she was in jeopardy. That is because the system identifies those students before any notification goes out.

"Schools used to have to apply for these waivers," said Patty Viverito, a member of the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse Committee and commissioner of the Gateway Football Conference and senior associate commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference. "And though it was a given that they would be granted, the parents of a 4.0 student who's a half core short flip out when they see the words 'not certified' and think we have rocks in our heads.

"Just by doing that one little adjustment and being able to screen those kids on the front end rather than make them go through a waiver process at the back end has eliminated not only a public relations problem but an anxiety problem for parents, student-athletes, coaches and institutions."