While it's not unusual to hear complaints from people who believe that the federal government isn't giving them a fair shake, it's a little odd to hear it from college presidents. But when it comes to graduation rates, Division I presidents and chancellors have been openly frustrated about the reporting method required by the federal Student Right-to-Know Act.

It's not submitting the data that bothers CEOs; it's the way the rates are calculated. Presidents believe the federal methodology is inaccurate because of the way it treats transfers. In the federal rate, an academically eligible student-athlete who transfers to another institution and eventually graduates counts neither toward the institution he or she transferred from nor toward the institution he or she transferred to. What results is a graduation rate for student-athletes that -- despite being higher on average than the general student body from year to year -- doesn't depict the loftier reality since it counts as failures all students who leave an institution for any reason, regardless of academic standing.

"The federal methodology does not accurately reflect what is going on at institutions -- and certainly not at many athletics programs," said University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman. "There is a good bit of transfer among institutions, and those student-athletes are lost within the rate. We know that not only in athletics programs but in student bodies as well that many students begin college, then they transfer, and they are counted in the federal rate as dropping out and never getting a degree. That's not the case at all."

"The U.S. Department of Education has employed a simplistic methodology," said Robert Hemenway, Coleman's peer at the University of Kansas. "They look at students as they come in as freshmen and then they look to see if they graduate four, five and six years down the line. They pay no attention to anyone who started at one institution and transfers into another. As a result, it is a skewed and unsatisfactory way to calculate graduation."

Both Coleman and Hemenway are members of the Division I Board of Directors, which supports the NCAA's development of an alternative methodology that takes such transiency into account. The "Graduation Success Rate" (GSR) captures all scholarship student-athletes entering an institution, including transfers. The GSR is not intended to replace the federal rate, though some presidents hope the new methodology is successful enough that the Department of Education will consider doing just that.

More reflective of reality

Though the rate sounds easy enough to compile, problems remain about how the data are gathered and applied. For one, the rate requires additional legwork for institutions, though most already are providing some data on transfers.

"The national office already collects a separate transfer-cohort graduation rate for Division I," said NCAA Managing Director of Research Todd Petr. "Whoever does the graduation-rate compilation at the school already is tracking transfers into the institution. The issue is transfers out. The one burdensome thing administrators will have to add is an assessment of academic standing of student-athletes who have left -- would they have been eligible? Normally if someone leaves you would not run an eligibility check."

The GSR may be regarded by the general public and others as the NCAA's attempt to put a positive spin on graduation rates in football and men's basketball, which typically lag behind other sports as well as the student body. Pilot study data do show that graduation rates will rise for most programs under the new methodology, but they also show that programs that rely heavily on transfers who then don't do well academically won't benefit from the new rate. Presidents on the Board of Directors say that's a significant facet of the GSR since the whole point of the academic reform movement is to encourage programs to recruit and admit athletes who are serious about being students first. The federal methodology does not hold institutions that rely on transfers accountable. While some people might think the NCAA is creating a rate that is self-serving, Petr said presidents are merely seeking the truth, not avoiding it.

"The federal methodology does not account for transfers in, which for some sports is more than one-third of the total number of scholarship athletes, so you're missing a large fraction of the pool," he said. "The federal methodology also, in the opinion of the Board of Directors, is overly punitive about student-athletes who leave the institution and have done well before they transferred for legitimate reasons."

Coleman disputes that NCAA members want a rate that merely "cooks the books." Since Michigan already scores well with the federal rate, Coleman could be inclined not to care about developing a new methodology. But she says she has the big picture in mind.

"Most of our students are traditional-aged students -- they start, they graduate, and very few transfer out or in. So for us the current rate is pretty accurate," she said. "But what I'm looking at is the bigger picture around the country. The federal methodology isn't accurate for most institutions. Once those who doubt the intentions of the GSR actually look at what the new model is, they will realize it's a much more accurate tool.

"Why not try to more accurately reflect what's going on?"

Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany agrees.

"It's natural for people to be skeptical, but they should take the time to familiarize themselves with the transiency issues," he said. "If someone wants to take the position that it's an effort to cook the books and they're unwilling to listen to the critique of the federal rate, then there's not much you can do about that individual.

"But the federal methodology is at best an imprecise and blunt instrument for measuring what is actually happening at many schools. The federal rate has everyone who enters that school included in the denominator, and the only individuals captured in the numerator are those who graduate. In intercollegiate athletics, we're probably somewhere in the 15 to 20 percent range of transfer. When you have that much transiency and you're not able to capture it in your efforts to describe graduation success, that's a problem."

'Not a stand-alone rate'

Presidents are quick to emphasize that the GSR is important not only in and of itself but as part of the more encompassing academic reform package. The point of the reform movement initiated by the Board of Directors Task Force two years ago was to focus on the academic preparedness of student-athletes entering college, make sure they reach academic benchmarks that put them on track to graduate, and hold institutions accountable for finishing the job.

The Board already adopted enhanced initial-eligibility and progress-toward-degree standards that became effective with this year's entering class. The second stage of reform is to develop a metric to measure the academic progress of all sports teams and then establish an incentives/disincentives package that rewards or penalizes teams according to how well they meet the new standards. The Graduation Success Rate is part of that bigger picture.

"It is important to understand that the GSR will help because it is coupled with other academic reform. It's not a stand-alone rate," Coleman said. "All of us on the Board keep saying that this is a package. Look at the whole piece -- the much more stringent initial-eligibility requirements and the increased number of core courses, the enhanced benchmarks in progress toward degree -- look at the effect this will have on how teams recruit and who the institution admits. All of this will give us a much better picture."

The GSR factors into the reform package at the point in which teams measure their academic progress within the incentives/disincentives structure. There are three "filters" teams must clear in order to determine whether they "qualify" for rewards or penalties. The first filter is a comparison of a team's academic success against all other teams in all other sports. The second compares a team's academic success against all other teams in that sport only. The third compares the team against the institution's student body. That's where the GSR comes in.

Right now, though, the only way to compare student-athletes with the student body is with the federal methodology, since there is no GSR for the student body. But presidents don't want to use what they believe is a flawed rate to determine how something as important as the incentives/disincentives package is applied. Thus, the challenge is finding a comparable measurement for the student body.

The easiest answer would be for the federal government to fall in love with the GSR and adopt it as the methodology for tracking graduation for all students. But so far, the Department of Education has been unreceptive to the idea. The NCAA's Petr said that education department representatives believe transfers are just too hard to track.

"We think there might be ways to solve that problem," Petr said.

The Board of Directors has asked Petr and the Division I Management Council working group on incentives and disincentives to look into it. The working group has suggested that compiling a GSR for the student body only be required for institutions that fail to clear the first two filters, and even then the GSR would be applied only to a random sampling of the student body. The Board of Directors, however, at least at first blush, did not support that concept.

Petr said other discussions have included some type of relationship with the National Student Clearinghouse (formerly the National Student Loan Clearinghouse) to track the academic records of student-athletes who transfer out of an institution. The clearinghouse, however, does not have complete coverage of NCAA institutions, which means that schools would still have to do some of the tracking themselves, depending on where the transfers go. Ultimately, the goal is to come up with a system that does not further burden an already form-heavy membership.

Michigan's Coleman still hopes the Department of Education can be persuaded to climb aboard. "We hope that if the NCAA develops a good enough mechanism, the federal government may be encouraged to change its methodology," she said. "Somebody needs to go first here, and I think the NCAA is the one breaking new ground. If people look at it and think this gives us a better picture, then I'm not precluding the notion that the Department of Education might want to use this."

Until then, Kansas Chancellor Hemenway said the working group will just have to spend a little more time at the drawing board. He mentioned a combination of the federal rate and the GSR as a possibility, where one cohort would be transfers and the other would be freshmen who graduated. But he acknowledged that the task is easier talked about than performed.

"We hope the working group can come up with a way to compare student-athletes to the general student body," he said, "because it's important for athletics departments and the NCAA to continue to demonstrate that student-athletes on average are graduating at a greater rate than the student body."

The hope is to reach resolution on the issue quickly. The proposed GSR is included in the academic reform package that the Board of Directors will vote on at its April 2004 meeting. Assuming approval, GSR data would be collected in spring 2005 for release in summer 2005.

Scholarship assistance earns athletes additional scrutiny

Every year when Division I student-athlete graduation rates are released, the media jumps on the opportunity to analyze, compare and judge the academic status of college sports. Perhaps no other college student receives that kind of attention when it comes to knowing whether he or she obtained a diploma.

But college presidents, who obviously are familiar with encouraging all students to graduate, aren't bothered by the extra focus trained on student-athletes.

"Athletics departments have a special responsibility to graduate student-athletes because they're providing an enormous amount of tutorial and academic support," said University of Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway. "The general public says, 'If you're providing all this special assistance to student-athletes, what is your graduation rate?' That's a legitimate question for the public to ask and we've got to be able to answer it. So it doesn't surprise me that there is a special emphasis on student-athletes because people are aware of the considerable efforts we go through to provide assistance to them."

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman agrees, saying that the expectation that student-athletes obtain a diploma is a fair exchange for the benefits they receive.

"Student-athletes receive huge benefits from the institution -- scholarships, academic assistance -- in exchange for being able to do something they love," she said. "It can at its best be a wonderful relationship. We have to be very cautious not to send the message that we are recruiting young people only to play and that we don't care about their academic development or them completing their degree. In the end, that's the hallmark -- getting the degree. That's what we want all of our students to do."

-- Gary T. Brown

Basketball coaches among groups that support alternative rate

Of all the groups seeking relief from the federally mandated graduation-rates methodology that paints a misleading picture of the academic success at many athletics programs, basketball coaches may be the most upbeat about the NCAA's Graduation Success Rate.

Men's basketball student-athletes traditionally have ranked lower than student-athletes in other sports and lower than the general student body since the federal rate has been in place. But the transfer rate in men's basketball is among the highest in college sports, so it stands to reason that a rate that accounts for such transiency would better reflect reality. At least National Basketball Coaches Association Executive Director Jim Haney thinks so.

"A lot of coaches feel that although the federal rate is accurate in terms of how it's calculated, it's not truly reflective of what's happening in many programs," he said. "The feeling is that the federal rate really does not address transfers, so some programs are stuck with a lower rate than may truly be the case.

"The majority of basketball coaches favor the Graduation Success Rate, as well as the new Academic Progress Rate (the term-by-term metric applied to all teams). They are encouraged that the two will more accurately reflect reality."

But not all programs will necessarily benefit from the new rate. NCAA Managing Director of Research Todd Petr said the NCAA already has some transfer data that show some programs would do worse with the new methodology.

"An institution that relies heavily for a given team on transfers who then fail academically would in fact see its rate lowered by the move to the methodology to include transfers," Petr said. "We've seen some of that in the data we have already."

Such cases probably wouldn't be widespread, though. Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany in fact said in many cases, transfer student-athletes have higher graduation rates than those who stay at one institution.

"For example, in men's basketball, the data I've seen show that the players who transfer from one four-year school to another and end up being in residence for five years because of sitting a year probably have the highest graduation rate for all basketball student-athletes," he said. "It's like freshman ineligibility, only it's junior ineligibility. It's noteworthy that this group graduates at a higher rate than do freshmen and transfers from junior colleges because it's a system based on five years of academic work."

Haney said a group that may be lost in either formula is basketball players who as seniors decide to play professionally overseas in order to embellish their athletics credentials and then don't complete their degree until several years later. "Most of those who complete their degree don't do it within the six-year window reflected by the graduation-rates calculation," he said.

Regardless of the nuances, though, Haney said most coaches are up to speed on the academic-reform measures and are taking steps to prepare and comply.

"The incentives/disincentives package is visibly before our coaches and already impacting them in terms of who they recruit and in terms of what they expect of their players," Haney said. "The effect of the reform on transfers and junior college players will be significant in terms of how those players must prepare to meet the new minimums."

-- Gary T. Brown