Data from the 2004-05 Academic Progress Rate cohort appear to verify the rationale for an adjustment made to the APR last year that accommodates student-athletes who turn pro and maintain their eligibility.

Of the 839 student-athletes in 2004-05 who left for the professional ranks, 541 (64.5 percent) maintained their eligibility for the term during which they left. In men’s basketball, 55 of the 119 pro departures remained eligible. The numbers in football and baseball were 159 of 278 and 199 of 261, respectively.

“We’re encouraged that even those student-athletes choosing to pursue professional sports are maintaining their eligibility,” said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president for membership services. “The concern at the time the adjustment was made was that it was unreasonable to expect those players to remain eligible — particularly in basketball because of the timing of the professional draft — but data show that most of them are.”

In 2005, the Division I Board of Directors agreed in the spirit of fairness that institutions could adjust their APR calculations for student-athletes who leave for the professional ranks, as long as they maintain their eligibility for that term. In other words, those student-athletes would be forgiven the retention point in the APR calculation as long as they earned the eligibility point.

Such cases are counted as “1-for-1” in the APR.

The Board agreed to the adjustment based on the fact that a student’s decision to turn pro is almost always beyond the institution’s control, and that holding the school accountable for the retention point in such cases was unfair.

As Lennon said, concerns from several coaches groups were that the adjustment didn’t go far enough. Many felt it was reasonable to include the eligibility linchpin the adjustment requires. The assumption was that in basketball, for example, student-athletes who have decided to turn pro often abandon their schooling after the playing season ends in March or April. Further, if those student-athletes are selected in the April NBA draft, they often begin training regimens immediately and thus compromise their academic requirements.

But presidents on the Board felt that not including the eligibility carrot compromised the spirit of academic reform. They believed that forgiving the retention point was fair, since that was beyond the institution’s control, but that it was still up to the school to at least try to keep those student-athletes on track to graduate.

Interestingly, the Board’s decision to make the adjustment for pro departures occurred after the students in the 2004-05 cohort left campus. Lennon said there is every reason to believe the percentage of future departures who keep their eligibility only will rise now that institutions know the ramifications.

“We’re hoping, and expecting, that as programs and students now know how important the eligibility point is to receive relief that more pro departures will leave eligible,” he said.

The numbers are good news to National Association of Basketball Coaches Executive Director Jim Haney, who said coaches can use them to influence players who might otherwise be inclined to back away from their academic responsibilities. “It’s one of those statistics you can use with your own players — you can say other kids are leaving and they are fulfilling their academic requirements; you need to do the same thing,” Haney said. “There’s no question that coaches are very cognizant of the APR. They recognize the upside of meeting the minimums and the downside of not.”

Data on reasons for student-athlete departures began being collected with the 2004-05 APR cohort; thus, comparable data on pro departures from the 2003-04 APR cohort are not available.

Pro departures from the 2004-05 APR cohort