After a year in which several high-profile eligibility cases surfaced involving student-athletes who received impermissible educational expenses to attend various preparatory schools, the NCAA has taken steps to educate the directors of those schools in an effort to curtail future problems.

The NCAA presented an educational outreach program October 3 to preparatory school principals, deans, admissions officers and headmasters in order to review not only NCAA rules regarding impermissible educational expenses, but also recruiting legislation, academic eligibility and changes that likely are ahead in the Association's amateurism rules.

"Our primary initiative was to provide an educational format for prep school administrators to better understand NCAA rules, concerns unique to the prep school -- different from the traditional school -- and future initiatives affecting their students," said Robert A. Oliver, NCAA director of membership services. "But it also was key for us to engage those people in a beneficial discussion about amateurism, agents and other issues that affect student-athlete eligibility."

Attendance for the program at the NCAA national office in Indianapolis was high, with only one of the more than 20 prep school administrators invited being unable to attend. The schools represented were identified based on their propensity for attracting a high number of prospective student-athletes who have developmental needs but upon leaving the prep school obtain eligibility in high-profile sports at Division I institutions.

Oliver said the NCAA has reached out to mainstream secondary schools before in an attempt to provide an understanding of eligibility requirements. However, the prep school population had not previously been targeted.

"The program allowed us to establish a face-to-face relationship with a lot of people the NCAA staff has dealt with over the phone in recent years," Oliver said. "It also enabled those people to respond to some issues we had identified regarding their academic curriculum and other issues that are unique to the prep school population."

Presentations during the program included a review of initial-eligibility standards and academic integrity, NCAA amateurism-deregulation initiatives, athletics apparel company activities and rules regarding precollege expenses to prospective student-athletes.

The latter issue was at the center of several high-profile cases in men's basketball last year. Part of the meeting was devoted to a review of new reinstatement policies for student-athletes who receive impermissible educational expenses.

"Because some of these prep schools have been involved in educational-expense cases in recent years, the NCAA felt it was important to engage the administrators directly," Oliver said.

"There was a certain degree of ignorance of what the NCAA expectations are in that area," said Bill McClintock, director of college counseling at Mercersburg Academy, a preparatory school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. "The discussion helped schools understand what is permissible as far as the kinds of 'sponsors' for kids attending those programs."

McClintock said the meeting also gave prep school administrators an opportunity to educate the NCAA about their mission.

"A lot of these schools were doing exactly what they're doing even before Prop 48 came along. They didn't develop overnight as a means to circumvent NCAA regulations," he said. "But administrators walked out of this meeting with a much clearer understanding of NCAA expectations, and that was tremendously helpful."

The meeting also included discussions about the extent to which the prep schools go to prepare prospects for improving their standardized test scores, as well as conversations about the dramatic improvements often seen in the academic performance of prospects attending those programs.

"Students can quite often make significant improvements to their grades by being lifted out of difficult home or family situations and being placed in a more structured atmosphere," McClintock said. "That's what many of these schools provide."