The group charged with identifying and overcoming barriers to academic performance for men’s basketball student-athletes is recommending in its final report a summer-school model that emphasizes academic commitment both from players as well as the institutions they attend.

The Division I Men’s Basketball Academic Enhancement Group, which held its final meeting April 6 in Detroit, settled on a version of the summer-school model after considering various alternatives in previous meetings. The group migrated from a mandatory two-year summer-school requirement for incoming students to a model that obligates institutions to determine whether their recruits require additional coursework over the summer terms.

The recommendation, which is among several from the group that conducted its work over the course of 18 months, is for schools to evaluate all incoming student-athletes using institutionally defined criteria and then establish standards to determine which student-athletes would be required to attend summer school. That replaces not only the mandatory-summer-school model previously debated but also one BAEG members considered that would exempt teams meeting certain APR scores from the summer-school requirement.

Instead, the group favored an institutional-based review, which could – and BAEG members say should – include a recently developed system called “Facilitating Learning and Achieving Graduation” that is designed essentially to “flag” incoming students who may be challenged academically and ensure they are given adequate support to succeed in college (see the story in NCAA Champion magazine about the FLAG system). While institutions would not be required to use FLAG as part of their institutional review, BAEG members strongly recommend the system because it offers sound criteria upon which to make informed decisions.

Incoming students who do not pass the institutional review would be subject to enrolling in six hours of summer school in addition to taking a study-skills component (whether that be structured as a for-credit course, or as a seminar/workshop format) and successfully pass at least three of those hours to be athletically eligible for the fall semester.

Enrollment in the summer terms (regardless of whether the enrollees are students who did not satisfy the institutional academic review or whether they are students in good academic standing who choose to attend summer school) would permit players to have greater athletics interaction with their coaches and allow participation in eight hours of conditioning, weight training and skill instruction activities per week, with no more than two of the hours devoted to skill instruction. That is in addition to the access period coaches currently enjoy from the conclusion of the Men’s Final Four to the end of the spring term.

“We were resolute in our belief that tying access to summer school is critical,” said BAEG Chair Dan Guerrero, athletics director at UCLA. “We already know that young men are spending 12-14 hours per week on basketball during the summer, and what better way to get them more acclimated into the college system than to have them spend those basketball hours with their coaches, who ultimately are going to be major influences on their success as college students.”

Some basketball stakeholders, particularly faculty groups, have seen previous coach-player interaction proposals as focusing too much on athletics at the expense of academics, but the faculty representatives on the BAEG believed enough safeguards and incentives were in place for the proposal to achieve its desired academic-improvement outcome.

At the same time, Guerrero said some individuals were concerned about moving from a mandatory summer-school structure to an institutional-based review, but ultimately the interaction piece was regarded as the incentive linchpin that would discourage any attempt to “game the system.”

“Not only was the interaction piece important,” Guerrero said, “but institutions also need to understand that the failure to identify those students and provide them with adequate support could hurt them on the back end (as APR failures) if those young men are not successful academically.”

The institutional review would be required for continuing student-athletes as well. Those who do not meet the standards in subsequent years would have to enroll in summer school and pass at least six credit hours for fall eligibility (the study-skills component required for incoming student-athletes does not carry over for continuing students).

Some BAEG members believe the interaction piece will end up encouraging almost all basketball student-athletes to attend summer classes – regardless of how they fare in the institutional review – which faculty, coaches and administrators alike see only as positive. Guerrero in fact said he thought the summer-school concept would produce “meaningful change.”

The BAEG will forward its summer-school proposal to conferences for feedback at spring meetings before including it in the group’s final report to the Board of Directors in August. Proposals that emerge from the Board meeting would enter the 2009-10 legislative cycle (meaning that the Division I Legislative Council would vote initially on proposals in January 2010).

Year of readiness

While the BAEG felt comfortable with its summer-school recommendation, members were not as clear on a proposal to require a “year of readiness” for student-athletes who transfer into four-year institutions from two-year colleges.

Data indicate that the so-called “2-4 transfers” are particularly susceptible to academic challenges, and several BAEG members favored requiring those student-athletes to sit out a year for academic purposes. In the end, though, the group did not believe it had adequate information on which to make an informed decision.

“This is a concept that the group deliberated over at length,” Guerrero said. “We don’t believe we’re in a position to move forward, though, with a definitive recommendation at this time. The community college system has approached the NCAA and wants to help define not only what a year of readiness means but also to come up with solutions as to how it should be facilitated. There needs to be considerable more evaluation, data and discussion of the various aspects before anyone moves forward with recommendations.”

BAEG members had previously considered requiring all 2-4 transfers (those first enrolling in a collegiate institution on or after August 1, 2010) to initially be subject to the year of readiness (they would be able to receive financial aid and practice with the team on campus) and then develop opt-out parameters based on to-be-determined academic benchmarks. However, the group cited a lack of sufficient data on 2-4 transfers and decided that the Division I Committee on Academic Performance and the Division I Academic Cabinet would be better suited (once more data are obtained) to determine requirements for 2-4 transfers.

“We want to allow the CAP and the cabinet to work with the community college system to continue to better define what a year in readiness concept could mean,” he said.

Those groups already have requested more data that identify academic characteristics of the 2-4 transfer cohort.

Other BAEG recommendations:

•         Recommended decreasing the maximum number of games by one to 28 regular-season games (or 26 regular-season games and one qualifying multiple-team event).

•         Recommended a gradated on-court practice schedule in the fall, beginning with restricted sessions October 1 and increasing to the current 20-hour-per-week maximum by October 15 (the current start date). The group sees the progression as necessary to acclimate student-athletes into the basketball season, and the recommendation does not add any hours of athletically related activities to the overall schedule.

•         Recommended that visiting institutions depart the competition site to return to their campus no later than 24 hours after the contest is concluded. (Previous policy had stipulated a 36-hour departure window, but BAEG members favored the 24-hour window to reduce missed class time for student-athletes.)

•         Recommended the following to the Committee on Academic Performance regarding APR calculation: (1) Provide consistent flexibility in the historically based and contemporaneous penalty waiver process during head-coaching transitions; (2) propose legislation granting “noncounter” status to a student-athlete who wishes to remain at the institution, but not participate in athletics, after the departure of the head coach who recruited him; (3) remove legislative barriers that may prevent a student-athlete from returning to an institution to complete a degree after a professional career; and (4) examine current professional tryout practices with the NBA and FIBA to reduce missed class time.