The Division I Committee on Academic Performance (CAP) advanced on multiple fronts during its April 26-27 meeting in Indianapolis, including discussion of retention issues as a mitigating factor in contemporaneous-penalty waiver requests.

The retention issue is relevant to the CAP's development of a directive to use when reviewing requests for waivers of contemporaneous penalties, a process for which parameters will need to be established by next fall.

Now that the 2003-04 Academic Progress Rate (APR) data have been finalized, much of the feedback from member institutions concerns the impact on a team's APR of student-athletes who leave the institution in good academic standing. Some people believe that in many instances, those departures (whether the student-athlete pursues a career in professional sports, transfers to another institution or leaves for personal reasons) are beyond the institution's control and should not warrant a reduction in the APR calculation.

CAP members have heard that feedback and are looking at those retention issues, particularly their unique applications in football, basketball and baseball.

While details haven't been completed -- and they probably won't be until the CAP's next meeting in July -- members did acknowledge the relevance of tailoring their review of retention to sport-specific concerns. For example, CAP members discussed the effects of transfers in baseball, a sport in which transfer rates tend to be high because it is an equivalency sport, and because baseball student-athletes can transfer without sitting out a year in residence (the "one-time transfer exception"). Also, attrition to the professional ranks in baseball may be higher than in other sports because of a rule that allows players to be drafted after their junior year.

CAP members also talked about circumstances in men's basketball in which players who decide to turn pro concentrate more on athletics preparation rather than academics in the spring semester. Thus, while those players end up counting as "0-for-2" student-athletes in the APR calculation, they were in good academic standing while on the team. Some people believe those cases could be considered as mitigating factors in reviews of waiver requests for contemporaneous penalties.

In the end, the CAP agreed to work directly with representatives of the coaches associations and member conferences to determine guidelines for reviewing those waiver cases before discussing the issue again in July.

Quantifying characteristics

The CAP's ambitious agenda also addressed how to quantify institutional mission -- or the historical characteristics that reflect the academic expectations at a given institution -- as a way of assisting in contemporaneous-penalty waiver requests (as well as application to historically based penalties in the future).

What the CAP is looking for is a model to quantify and compare the academic performance of student-athletes with that of the student body at a given institution. Currently, the only methodology that exists for quantifying academic performance for the student body is the federal graduation-rate calculation. However, as the NCAA begins to implement its own Graduation Success Rate (the more accurate calculation that factors in transfer students) for student-athletes, it will need to create a comparable rate for the student body.

The CAP has charged its subcommittees on appeals and data collection to determine variables (for example, socioeconomic characteristics of the institution, whether the institution is rural or urban, admissions selectivity, etc.) that will provide indicators of academic success for the student body. Decisions on those factors are expected by the CAP's next meeting in July.

Also expected in July is more discussion about potential meaningful scholarship or financial-based incentives to be added to the reform structure. While the incentives component of the original academic-reform effort has taken a back seat in recent months because of the complexities involved in determining disincentives, CAP members want to ensure that the companion incentives piece is not forgotten.

Preliminary discussion included the possibility of a bonus-point system in the APR for former student-athletes who return to the institution and graduate. CAP members also talked about ways to reward those student-athletes by providing need-based aid (similar to the existing degree-completion program). No conclusions were reached, however.

The CAP, chaired by University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, also dealt with how contemporaneous penalties affect sports with initial-counter limits, particularly Division I-A football. The issue grew from concerns about sports with initial-counter limits being unfairly impacted by contemporaneous penalties. For example, if a Division I-A football team incurred the maximum of nine contemporaneous penalties and thus was restricted to signing only 16 of the allowable 25 initial counters in a given year, that institution would be unable to return to its normal roster capacity in one recruiting cycle. CAP members noted that the contemporaneous penalties were not designed to have a multiyear effect.

Thus, the group issued an interpretation that will apply the 10 percent cap regarding contemporaneous penalties to both overall- and initial-counter limits as follows:

• In Division I-A football, the first three penalized scholarships will be charged against the initial-counter and overall team-counter limits, with remaining penalties (if applicable) countable against the overall team maximum (for a total of no more than nine head-count penalties overall).

• In Division I-AA football, the first of three penalized scholarships will be charged against the initial-counter, overall head-count and overall team-equivalency limits, with remaining penalties (if applicable) countable against the overall team-equivalency and overall head-count limits (for a total of no more than 6.3 equivalency penalties and nine head-count penalties overall).

• In ice hockey, penalties will be charged against the team equivalency and head-count limits (for a total of no more than 1.8 equivalency penalties and three head-count penalties overall).

Other highlights

Division I Committee on Academic Performance
April 26-27/Indianapolis

• Supported a requirement that institutions develop academic recovery plans after failing to meet established APR benchmarks in the contemporaneous and historically based penalty structures. Further details concerning such plans and a model sample plan will be finalized in July.

• Amended the definition of the APR cohort to align with the revised definition of retention (that is, enrolled as of the institution's fifth week of classes or official census date for the institution, whichever is earlier).

• Agreed to eliminate the squad-size adjustment beginning with the 2006-07 APR data for any team with an aggregate APR cohort of 30 or more student-athletes. For most teams, the squad-size adjustments will be in effect for three years (2003-04, 2004-05 and 2005-06 cohorts).

• Confirmed that, for APR purposes, a student-athlete is considered to be a graduate once he or she has met all institutional graduation requirements (for example, academic and administrative) and is considered by the institution to have graduated.

• Reviewed issues regarding the quarter-school APR adjustment and agreed to seek technical expertise from the Data Analysis Research Network in May before considering possible changes to the current adjustment during the July meeting.