Since its inception more than four years ago, the Academic Performance Program (APP) – and its main instrument, the Academic Progress Rate (APR) – have evolved from a simple system of eligibility and retention to something more complex and dynamic.

While some of the minimalism has been lost as the Committee on Academic Performance examined data and made policy changes based on that data that grant certain exceptions for teams that don’t meet the academic benchmarks, by and large the APP still works as it was originally intended – to encourage institutions to make a commitment to the education of their student-athletes.

The CAP has attempted to be fair and flexible to the Division I membership while at the same time remaining firm on the principle of academic success, but those efforts to be more accommodating have opened the door for some criticism from those who say the program is becoming – or could easily become – watered down.

In an effort to address some of these concerns, CAP Chair Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford, and NCAA Vice President for Membership Services Kevin Lennon will speak to the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics June 17.

Knight Commission Co-Chairs William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University of Maryland system, and R. Gerald Turner, president of Southern Methodist University, both expressed strong support for the APP and academic reform within intercollegiate athletics. However, both leaders have some qualms about the future, and they intend to raise those concerns during the Knight Commission session.

“The Knight Commission’s concern is that now that reform has been implemented, the tweaking that is inevitable should not be substantive in terms of eviscerating the whole program,” Turner said. “I don’t think they have been, but we need to make sure that the exceptions and extensions continue to be based on significant issues and that the reasons behind them are communicated, so that people won’t feel like things are slipping through the cracks.”

Specifically, Turner and Kirwan both mentioned what they view as a high number of waivers for teams that fall below a 925 APR as worrisome. In the 2006-07 data collection year, 46 institutions did not have to take any penalty due to receiving complete relief from a waiver. Other teams received relief because of policy decisions made by the committee.

Both Kirwan and Turner said they hoped the number would trend sharply downward in the near future, and that the Board of Directors would take an interest in the rationale for these exceptions.

“One of the values of this system is that it’s very objective,” Kirwan said. “If we allow exceptions based on subjective criteria, then it is watering down the system and, even worse, it’s unfair to schools that have taken this seriously and have implemented the programs and produced results.”

Hartford President Harrison said that as part of its work, the CAP reviews waivers – those granted by the staff and those that come before them for evaluation – and will continue to do so vigilantly. In its waiver review, the committee attempts to be fair and create a sense of balance between clear standards and the reality of member institutions with individual circumstances that might warrant extra consideration.

“The principle we’re trying to uphold is whether the individual circumstances of schools justify a waiver from a rather firm policy standard,” Harrison said. “We’ve done a good job, but we can review the effect of that on academic reform.”

The adjustments the CAP has made to the APR calculation have all been in the interest of improving the APP and driven by research from NCAA staff and outside consultants. The committee has made a variety of adjustments to the APR, including those for student-athletes who leave while eligible to pursue professional athletics opportunities, student-athletes who return to an institution to graduate after dropping out, student-athletes who participate in the Olympics or other international competition and student-athletes who transfer while meeting specific requirements.

Harrison also pointed to the “improvement-plus” model as the most important policy decision the committee has made since the APP began.

The improvement-plus model awards extra consideration to a team for demonstrating meaningful improvement and comparing favorably to other teams within that sport or meeting “institutional characteristics” requirements (resources, mission). The model is an example of the committee using data to make an adjustment that is both fair and open to the diverse membership base in Division I. 

“It is the change that is most understanding of the realities of Division I,” Harrison said.

With all of the waivers and adjustments, one of the principles of the original construct of the APP – that the cut scores of 925 for contemporaneous penalties and 900 for historically based penalties translate to about a 60 percent  and 50 percent Graduation Success Rate, respectively – has receded slightly. Kirwan said he’d like to see the CAP “ratchet up” those numbers to align them with the original intent.

In fact, those numbers have been examined at recent CAP meetings, and Harrison indicated that raising the minimum acceptable scores will be a topic of discussion at meetings this summer.

Kirwan, who was chair of the Board of Directors when the APP was adopted, said he sees a lot of good coming from the program – it successfully transferred the concept of an acceptable graduation rate into something that could be measured in real-time, it measures success by-sport instead of by-institution and schools are buying in to the belief that academic success is an important part of any athletics program.

“For the most part, schools seem to have taken this seriously, and the fact that meaningful penalties are tied to underperformance – penalties that threaten the competitiveness of individual teams – has the potential to make real change in student-athlete academic performance,” he said.

Those penalties are beginning to play out nationally. Next year, some schools could face the third stage of historically based penalties – restrictions on postseason competition. And after the third-occasion historically based penalties come membership restrictions. As with all the other elements of the APP, the committee will wait to see how the thoughtful, data-driven policy they constructed plays out in the real world.

“What I’ve learned over my time as chair of the Committee on Academic Performance and before that as a member of the Board of Directors is that we learn by going where we have to go. We keep learning new things and we keep applying them,” Harrison said. “We have adopted sound and well-thought-out policies, but we won’t actually know if they are until we see it in action. We learn from our experience.”

As the full array of penalties are implemented – which will happen with the 2008-09 data collection, the committee will continue its practice of remaining committed to academic reform while still being open-minded about the flexibility of its policies. Harrison pointed to the improvement in APRs reported by the NCAA last month as a sign that the program is working, that it is changing the culture of Division I athletics.

“We’re trying to do two things – be firm in our application of academic standards and be fair to our membership about individual circumstances,” Harrison said. “I suspect (the committee and the Knight Commission members) would probably agree that both of these are important principles.”

Turner agreed – but asked for further attentiveness on the part of the presidents.

“The Board is doing a good job,” he said. “On issues like reform, one of the roles of the Knight Commission is to encourage it and raise the kind of questions that wouldn’t be as easy to raise from inside the organization.”

Indeed, the academic reform effort was inspired at least in part by the Knight Commission report that called attention to a disconnect between athletics and academics and many Division I institutions. Because of that history, Harrison said he puts great value in any constructive criticism of the APP.

“We have firmly kept in mind the goal of improving the academic performance of our student-athletes,” he said. “Can we always get better? Absolutely.”

Timeline of Academic Performance Program Policy Changes

•         April 2005 – Board approves legislation to exempt from contemporaneous penalties aid awarded to student-athletes who are medical non-counters

•         July 2005 – Board supports changes to allow an adjustment for professional departures  and to grant a “bonus point” for former student-athletes who left an institution without graduating, come back to school and earn a degree.

•         October 2005 – Student-athletes participating in the Olympics or other international competitions are given an adjustment.

•         April 2006 – Institutions are permitted to request corrections and adjustments to APR data for all academic year cohorts that comprise the multi-year APR cohort.

•         July 2006 – Institutions are permitted to request the delayed graduation “bonus point” for any academic year included in the multi-year APR, and institutions can request an adjustment for student-athletes who transfer to pursue a degree program not offered at the original institution. Also, institutions are allowed to award an eligibility point for student-athletes whose progress-toward-degree waiver is approved after the student-athlete transfers from the institution (while academically ineligible).

•         January 2007 – Scholarship student-athlete enrolled beyond the fifth year with no athletics eligibility remaining are excluded from the APR cohort

•         April 2007 – The retention point is discounted when a missed-term exception is applied to certify a student-athlete’s eligibility and specific criteria are met.

•         January 2008 – The Board approves an adjustment to the APR for transfer student-athletes who meet specific criteria, including a minimum cumulative grade point average of 2.6. Additionally, institutions are permitted to request an adjustment for student-athletes who return to the APR cohort following a professional departure and eventual lose points due to a second professional departure provided specific criteria are met.