The most recent graduation-rates data collected by the federal government and released by the NCAA show that student-athletes continue to graduate at a rate higher than college students nationally.

The 1998-99 class (the most recent cohort) shows student-athlete graduating at a rate of 62 percent, two percentage points higher than the student-body rate. That gap is unchanged from the 1997-98 cohort. Graduation-rate data mandated through the Student Right-to-Know Act began being compiled with the entering class of 1984. Every class since 1986 has demonstrated that student-athletes graduate at rates higher than those of the general student body.

In addition to the federal graduation rates, the NCAA also released more results from its newly created Graduation Success Rate (GSR). The GSR was developed as a response to college and university presidents and chancellors who asked for an alternative rate that more accurately reflects the movement among college students. Studies reveal that about 60 percent of all new bachelor’s degree recipients are attending more than one undergraduate institution (two-year or four-year) during their collegiate careers.

Presidents believe the GSR is a more accurate rate since it credits institutions for incoming transfers who graduate, and it removes from the calculation transfers who leave the institution in good academic standing. The federal methodology does neither.

The most recent GSR release includes aggregate scores for Division I institutions. The NCAA released team-by-team and sport-by sport GSRs in December. Those data showed that 76 percent of Division I student-athletes graduate. There are no comparative GSR data for the overall student body at a national level.

“We will continue to meet our obligation to release the data compiled through the federal methodology even though we don’t believe they any longer reflect the mobility of today’s college students,” said NCAA President Myles Brand.

Brand noted that the federal graduation rate remains the only measurement by which to compare student-athlete academic success with the overall student body.

“It is encouraging, though, that even using the Department of Education’s more conservative methodology, student-athletes on average continue to graduate at a better rate than the student body,” he said. “But the difference in the rates when transfers are included demonstrates again that our GSR is doing exactly what we hoped — giving a more accurate picture of student-athlete academic achievement.”

Brand said he has contacted Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings urging the Department of Education to apply the GSR methodology to all students. He said the total number of students included in the GSR compared with the total in the federal cohort is further evidence that the GSR is a more reflective rate. For the four-year span that encompasses the current data (entering classes from 1995 through 1998), there were 67,219 students tracked within the federal cohort and 90,099 within the GSR — an increase of about 35 percent.

University of Hartford President Walter Harrison, who chairs both the NCAA Executive Committee and the Division I Committee on Academic Performance, said college presidents are more likely to start relying on the GSR as the primary tool in assessing teams’ graduation success. “The GSR gives us a more accurate way of looking at how our teams are doing and who needs to improve,” he said. “As more years of GSR data are compiled and trends become known, that metric will become the gold standard in studying graduation rates.”

On average, GSR scores for various cohorts are about 10 to 15 percentage points higher than the corresponding federal rates. For example, according to the federal methodology, Division I-A football student-athletes graduate at a rate of 55 percent, down two points from last year’s cohort. The GSR for the corresponding group, though, is 65 percent. In Division I men’s basketball, the federal rate is 43 percent, down one point from last year, while the GSR is 58 percent.

Black football players in Division I-A graduated at a 49 percent rate under the federal rate (six points higher than black male college students at Division I-A institutions) and 55 percent under the GSR. Division I-A white football players graduated at a 63 percent rate under the federal rate, down four points from last year and at the same rate as white male college students. The GSR for the same cohort is 78 percent.

Division I black male basketball players graduated at 38 percent under the federal rate — down four points from last year but two points higher than black male college students overall — but at 49 percent using the GSR calculation. The numbers for white male basketball players are 53 percent using the federal rate — seven points lower than the rate for white male college students — and 76 percent using the GSR.

Brand said even though the GSR figures are more accurate and show higher rates than the federal methodology, results in sports such as football and men’s basketball are not optimal.

“These data underscore why our academic reforms are so important,” said Brand. “While these figures highlight student graduation levels that predate our academic reforms, they are still too low.”

Graduation-rates findings

Notable findings from the federal calculation for the entering class of 1998-99:

-- Black athletes at Division I-A institutions graduated at an all-time high rate of 53 percent; black females were at 68 percent.

--  Division I female student-athletes graduated at an all-time high rate of 71 percent.

--  Rates for Division I-A football players fell by two percentage points from the 1997-98 cohort (from 57 to 55 percent). Rates for whites in the 1998-99

I-A football cohort fell four percentage points (from 67 to 63 percent), while Blacks remained steady at 49 percent.

--  Rates for male basketball players at institutions with I-A football dropped from 39 to 38 percent. Rates for whites in that cohort, though, rose from 47 to 57 percent. Rates for Blacks fell from 35 to 30 percent.

--  In women’s basketball, rates for Blacks fell from 59 to 56 percent.

--  Rates for Division I baseball players fell from 46 to 45 percent.

Divisions II and III rates also released

Federal graduation-rates data also were released for NCAA Divisions II and III institutions. In Division II, the data continue to show that student-athletes are significantly outpacing the general student body in terms of graduation. Using the federal calculation, student-athletes entering Division II schools in 1998 graduated at a rate of 54 percent, versus 46 percent for the general student body. At this point, Division II is not calculating an alternative graduation rate but plans to release such a rate for selected schools beginning with the next public release of graduation-rates information.

Most Division III student-athletes are not covered by the federal methodology, because it includes only student-athletes who receive athletics aid. Therefore, the data for Division III are most appropriately used to analyze success rates within the student bodies. In all, students who entered those institutions in the fall of 1998 showed a graduation rate of 62 percent using the federal methodology.

Student-athlete/student body comparison

Student-athlete group - Student-athlete grad rate - Student body grade rate

White        66%  63%

Black 52%  43%

White males       59%  60%

Black males        48%  36%

White females    73%  65%

Black females     63%  47%

Data available online

The federal graduation-rates data and NCAA Graduation Success Rate information are available at NCAA Online (www.ncaa.org). Click on “Academics and Athletes,” then “Education and Research.”