NCAA President Myles Brand’s goal of an 80 percent Graduation Success Rate for Division I is a percentage point closer to fruition with the release of NCAA data showing the overall GSR for the division at 77 percent, up from 76 percent last year.

"All the trends in the data are headed in the right direction," Brand said. "There’s upward movement across the board, though there still are some outliers and some more work to be done."

In addition to the increase for the entire division, the GSR for male student-athletes rose from 69 percent to 70 percent. The GSR for female student-athletes remained steady at an already-high 86 percent.

The data is from the four-class aggregate of entering classes from 1996 through 1999, for which the NCAA has compiled sport-by-sport GSR and the comparable graduation rate using the federal methodology required annually of colleges and universities through the 1990 Student Right-to-Know Act.

The NCAA developed the GSR two years ago because the federal rate does not credit institutions with student-athletes who leave in good academic standing or for transfers into the school who graduate. The GSR accounts for both of those transfer groups, which has resulted in a more accurate depiction of student-athlete academic success, since it captures about 35 percent more students than the federal methodology.

The NCAA continues to provide the federally mandated graduation rate, however, since there is no comparable rate to the GSR for the student population. If the U.S. Department of Education adopts the unit record system for every student as recommended by the secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education, comparable data to the GSR will be available through the federal rate.

The GSR release is the first of two this fall, and it includes four-class averages for each team at each institution, as well as the four-class federal graduation rate for that sport. Because the focus is at the team level, the data are provided as four-class aggregates, since that format is a much more accurate indicator of a team’s academic performance than any single-cohort rate. The NCAA will release each institution’s overall federal graduation rate in November. The NCAA also will include each school’s overall GSR for student-athletes on the federal report, as well as breakdowns by gender and race.

University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, who chairs the NCAA Executive Committee and the Division I Committee on Academic Performance, said the GSR reports provide another valuable tool for presidents to measure student-athlete academic performance.

"And the good news is that the results show that presidents, athletics directors and coaches are paying attention to academic concerns," he said. "These reports provide an important management tool for presidents to celebrate the academic success of teams that achieve high marks and to raise questions of those that don’t."

All three Division I subdivisions also realized percentage-point jumps in the four-class GSR data from 1996-99. Schools with football in the Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) went from 77 to 78 percent, schools with football in the Championship Subdivision (Formerly Division I-AA) went from 73 to 74 percent, and schools that do not sponsor football went from 79 to 80 percent, meeting President Brand’s goal he announced earlier this fall during a speech at Elon University.

"The goal of 80 percent GSR is not an ‘official’ NCAA goal, but one that I think stretches us and can be accomplished," Brand said. "Division I is close to that goal now at 77 percent, and these data do not fully reflect the academic reforms Division I has adopted in the last three years."

The entering class of 2003, for example, is the first one subject to enhanced initial-eligibility and progress-toward-degree requirements. Brand also said the introduction of the Academic Progress Rate has prompted institutions to redouble their efforts toward ensuring student-athlete academic success.

"I believe the 80 percent target for the entire division is attainable in the near future. A one-percentage-point increase from last year may not sound like much," he said, "but when you get these high numbers, such an increase is of consequence, and I believe we can stretch it further."

Many individual sports are well above the 80 percent mark already. Skiing (89 percent) lacrosse (88 percent), and fencing (87 percent) were the highest-ranking men’s sports in the GSR, while gymnastics, fencing, field hockey and skiing all were at 94 percent on the women’s side.

The lowest-ranking sports for each gender in the GSR were basketball (59 percent), baseball (65 percent) and football (65 percent) for men, and bowling (70 percent), rifle (78 percent) and basketball (82 percent) for women. The men’s basketball GSR of 59 percent, though, was an improvement from the 58 percent four-class average posted by the 1995-98 cohort. Football Bowl Subdivision teams in the 1996-99 cohort also rose one percentage point, from 65 to 66 percent.

In key women’s sports, gains in the four-class average occurred in basketball (from 81 to 82), ice hockey (84 to 88), softball (84 to 85) and soccer (87 to 88).

The research also lists the annual overall GSR by sport for the entering classes from 1995 through 1999. Those data show that the GSR for men has increased from 68 percent to 71 percent, and from 85 to 88 percent for women. Men’s basketball went from 56 percent to 61 percent in the same period, while Football Bowl Subdivision teams went from 63 percent to 68 percent.