In recent years, the University of North Dakota has been extremely successful, both academically and athletically.

On the academic side, our university ranked this past year among the top 10 Division II institutions in graduation rates for student-athletes. For eight consecutive semesters, our student-athletes have had a cumulative grade-point average exceeding 3.000. Last semester, 61 of our student-athletes made straight A's. In the 1990s, we had 16 NCAA postgraduate scholarship recipients.

As for athletics, last year we placed second in Division II in the Sears Cup competition, and in four of the six years of the Sears Cup, we have finished in the top 10 programs in the nation. North Dakota won 46 North Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championships in the 1990s and has won six NCAA championships since 1997.

Our fan support is outstanding. In football, only 28 Division I-AA teams averaged more in attendance than North Dakota did last year, and we fill the Engelstad Arena for every one of our Division I men's ice hockey games.

In the face of all this, we have considered whether to reclassify our program in Division I. However, we have little interest at this time in making such a change because there is no compelling reason to do so. As we see it, the known costs and the potential costs outweigh any benefits.

We attribute our success to a traditional philosophy that places athletics solidly within our educational mission, as we believe it was meant to be. At North Dakota, athletics is co-curricular rather than extracurricular. Through athletics, our students learn to work effectively in groups. They learn how to pick themselves up after a reversal and get on with it. They come to know completely what it means to function as part of a community. Student-athletes learn how to balance multiple obligations by having to succeed on the field and in the classroom. All of those are important outcomes of a North Dakota education; they should be in every university.

But, alas, there are schools with basketball teams having no graduates over many years.

That and other problems are illuminated very well in the latest report of the Knight Foundation

Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which once again laments the disconnect between athletics and academics in American higher education.

Naturally, we should be cautious about changing anything that would take us "out of our game," certainly without good and sufficient reason. Many of the alleged upsides to move to Division I are myths. There are no credible data to show that Division I-AA status confers an advantage in either alumni giving or enrollment growth.

Meanwhile, the downsides are many. (1) There are great problems in intercollegiate athletics in America, and while those problems span all divisions of the NCAA, most scandals seem to be associated with Division I. (2) Current NCAA restrictions make it difficult -- by design -- for programs to reclassify to Division I. (3) Cost is a considerable issue and is getting bigger. We estimate (conservatively) that we would need $2 to $3 million in additional revenue each year to do as well as we do now if we played across the board at the Division I level. Increased costs stem from requisite increased coaching staff salaries and increased scholarship support. Because so few Division I schools are nearby, travel costs would be considerable, and there could be increased time away from classes for our students.

North Dakota's current annual athletics budget is $5.8 million ($1.8 million of which is for our Division I hockey program); the average for Division I-AA schools is $4.7 million; the average for the nearest Division I-AA conference, the Big Sky, is $6.2 million.

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education cited a case of a Division I institution facing a $55 million deficit in its athletics program over the next five years -- even though the school's football, basketball and ice hockey teams all show a "profit." That school is subsidizing athletics from dollars that could be spent on academic programs to the tune of $8 to $10 million a year. Those budget problems are threatening the nonrevenue sports at that institution, just as they are at other schools nationwide. This trend increasingly takes college sports out of the "co-curricular" -- even out of the "extracurricular" -- into professional sports and on toward irrelevance to higher education.

Noted here for a sense of scale is that Ohio State University's reported athletics budget each year exceeds the legislative appropriation received this year by the University of North Dakota.

Our institution is open to an eventual move to Division I, but there is no great interest among our athletics staff, coaches or boosters. We see no particular gain to making such a move because it would not be in the best interests of our students or the people of North Dakota. If Division I rules and trends were to become less mercenary and more educationally rational; if the rapid escalation of the costs of Division I sports were to be reversed somehow; if the restrictions on schools making the move were made less severe; or if very many schools from the North Central Conference make the move, then we could well give it some extra consideration.

A number of North Central Conference schools match up well with us in that they have Division I hockey and enjoy competitive programs in Division II. These are fine institutions, and there are others with similar profiles that could join our conference and allow for good regional rivalries to be developed and sustained.

We will not be resting on our laurels in any case. In the spirit of Title IX and for other good reasons, we will establish women's ice hockey at the Division I level. We will be beefing up support for a number of our sports, and we will continue to upgrade our facilities. Our top priority will be to continue to provide high-quality educational and competitive athletics opportunities for male and female athletes who are also students -- striking the right balance between athletics and academics.

Charles E. Kupchella is president of the University of North Dakota.