The Division II Academic Requirements Committee reiterated the importance of Academic Performance Census data collection and discussed ways those data can inform future academic-policy decisions during the group’s February 19-20 meeting in Indianapolis.

Division II began requiring APC data submission this academic year. Submissions were voluntary before that, but the response rate was too low to properly inform decision-making. Thus, the Division II Presidents Council made reporting mandatory, with the penalty for noncompliance being the loss of enhancement funds for the following year.

All but 15 active Division II institutions met the reporting deadline this year (18 weeks after the institution’s first day of class). They were required to submit academic data on the entering classes of 2006 and 2007, which gives the NCAA research staff two cohorts (2006 and 2007) and three classes (freshmen in 2006, and freshmen and sophomores in 2007) of academic data to analyze by September.

APC data include credit hours attempted and earned, term and cumulative grade-point average, choice of academic major, and retention and eligibility (and reasons for not achieving either), among others.

With early data from the first two cohorts now in the pipeline and able to be linked with high school academic data from the NCAA Eligibility Center, the Academic Requirements Committee began preparing for how its members will review the data and consider possible academic policy issues based on the results.

Among the issues ARC members want to address are:

• How well do core-course grade-point average, test scores and other high school academic variables currently predict first-year outcomes for Division II student-athletes?

• Are there any advantages to using high school core-course GPA and test scores in a compensatory manner (for example, a sliding scale) versus a conjunctive fashion (needing to meet a minimum on both) in terms of accuracy of prediction, fairness or adverse impact?

• How do the academic-performance patterns of nontransfers, two-year transfers and four-year transfers differ?

The ARC plans to begin answering those questions based on the data by the group’s September meeting. Preliminary discussions are likely to focus on initial eligibility since meaningful progress-toward-degree analysis will have to wait at least three more years (in order for the first 2006-07 cohort to complete five years).

While these may be baby steps, the ARC is pleased to at least have a foundation upon which to build.

“You don’t often hear the words ‘exciting’ and ‘data’ in the same sentence, but that’s just what this is for our committee,” said ARC Chair Paul Leidig, the faculty athletics representative at Grand Valley State. “If the Division II strategic-positioning platform says that the division is about balance, learning and resourcefulness, then we need to be able to make data-based decisions when it comes to academic policy. These data from the APC will help reveal an academic profile of Division II student-athletes and allow us to structure our academic standards and expectations accordingly over time.”

In that vein, Leidig emphasized the importance of Division II institutions submitting data in a timely and accurate manner. While most schools met the deadline this year (and the ARC acknowledged the demands from submitting two cohorts), the research staff noted that the data aren’t perfect. In fact, more than one in five student-athlete records are missing both eligibility and retention outcome data for at least one term in which the student-athlete was enrolled.

ARC members suspect those gaps could be due to the newness of the initiative or perhaps because the sanctions for not submitting data aren’t as severe as they are with the Division I Academic Progress Rate initiative, which imposes a strict progression of penalties for academic underperformance. The ARC, though, supported a change in the technology that would prompt institutions to fill in the required blanks before the form could be transmitted.

“Institutions should realize how important this information is, since Division II would be hampered in developing future academic reforms that affect eligibility standards without these data. The effort is a critical component of the division’s strategic-positioning platform,” Leidig said.

In addition, Leidig said, institutions should be eager to provide these data since they almost always indicate a higher rate of academic success for student-athletes than the general student body at most Division II schools.

ARC members also charged staff with exploring possible efficiencies in data submission, perhaps by further aligning APC data submission with the Compliance Assistant software.