Division II released Academic Success Rates by conference during the recent NCAA Convention in Washington, D.C.

The data are sorted from the 1998-2001 freshman cohorts collected this fall, which revealed that 70 percent of Division II student-athletes are earning their degrees – far higher than the rate posted by students generally at Division II schools.

This is the third year that Division II has collected ASR data that figure transfer and nonscholarship student-athletes into the calculation. The Division II Presidents Council advocated development of the ASR as a more accurate alternative to the federally mandated graduation-rate methodology that records only scholarship student-athletes and does not take transfers into account.

As a result, the ASR reveals graduation rates that are much higher than the federal calculation. The ASR for the three-year cohort is 15 percentage points higher than the federal rate (70 percent to 55 percent) and 16 points higher (71 to 55) for the entering class of 2001.

The ASR is similar to Division I’s Graduation Success Rate, though while both rates account for transfers in good academic standing, the Division II ASR goes a step further by accounting for all nonscholarship student-athletes (the Division I rate includes only scholarship athletes). That means the ASR captures more than twice the enrolled student-athletes as the federal rate, largely because more than 25,000 nonscholarship student-athletes are included in the three-year NCAA Division II calculation.

The by-conference data also reflects student-athlete supremacy. Even when using the federal rates to compare student-athlete and student-body success, most conferences show student-athletes graduating at far higher rates.

For more information on the Division II ASR and for ASR data for individual institutions, click here.