The Division II Academic Requirements Committee has brought back a concept regarding English and math requirements for two-year college transfers for further review.

The idea was to require two-year-transfer qualifiers with no previous attendance at a four-year collegiate institution to have passed three semester or four quarter hours of English and math to establish eligibility at the Division II school. All other qualifiers, partial qualifiers and nonqualifiers would be required to pass six semester or eight quarter hours of English and three (four quarters) in math.

The concept resembles new Division I legislation that becomes effective August 1 (for student-athletes initially enrolling full time in a collegiate institution on or after that date).

The ARC in February asked the Division II Management Council to sponsor the measure for the 2010 Convention. The ARC discussed it again during a July 10 conference call after the Council raised questions about how remedial coursework factors into the requirements and whether two-year college transfers who had previously attended four-year schools could use hours earned at the four-year institution for eligibility purposes.

ARC members struggled to reach consensus on the question of remedial courses. Some members believed the use of them should reflect institutional policy while others said remedial courses should not be allowed at all, even though current legislation permits incoming freshmen to apply remedial coursework in their first year toward continuing eligibility.

The committee also could not agree on whether the remedial-course restriction should apply only to nonqualifiers and partial qualifiers.

Members also wrestled with timing issues, knowing that the Division I version of the proposal set to go into effect brings a competitive-equity element to the discussion. In the end, they were not comfortable making a decision that could affect the division’s academic standards without more consultation.

The matter will be on the committee’s agenda for its in-person meeting in September.

Prueba de Aptitud Academica

While the ARC wasn’t ready to commit to the two-year transfer proposal, members did affirm their support of 2010 Convention legislation that would allow prospects seeking to establish initial eligibility at the three Division II institutions in Puerto Rico to use the Prueba de Aptitud Academica to fulfill test-score requirements.

The three Puerto Rico schools (it was four before Puerto Rico-Cayey announced it was withdrawing its NCAA membership) are part of a larger Puerto Rican athletics conference that before last year required freshmen to redshirt, meaning there was no need for freshmen to be certified by the NCAA (though they did need to obtain an amateurism certification from the Eligibility Center). Subsequent eligibility was usually satisfied through the Division II year-in-residence rule.

When the redshirt rule was changed, however, academic-eligibility certification for freshman student-athletes at the Puerto Rican schools became necessary. That was complicated, though, since there is no Spanish equivalent of the SAT or ACT.

Rather than rely on waivers to process these student-athletes, the Division II ARC asked the Management Council to sponsor legislation specifying that the Prueba de Aptitud Academica administered in Puerto Rico should be accepted by the Eligibility Center for purposes of meeting the test-score requirements for initial eligibility.

If adopted (the proposed effective date is August 1, 2010), all prospective student-athletes (including those from high schools in the 50 states) seeking initial eligibility at the three Puerto Rican institutions could use the PAA to satisfy the test-score requirement. That option would not be available to establish initial eligibility at other colleges and universities.

ARC members emphasized that while the PAA is by no means a “Spanish version” or a “Spanish equivalent” of the SAT or ACT, it is the best substitute for meeting the test-score requirement for prospects intending to participate in athletics at the Puerto Rican schools.

NCAA staff members have worked with the College Board to determine that a score of 730 on the PAA is at about the same point on the overall distribution of test scores (one standard deviation below the average of all test-takers) as 820 on the SAT and 68 on the ACT, which are the current test-score standards. That score on the PAA, in addition to a high school grade-point average of 2.0, would be sufficient for initial-eligibility certification of student-athletes enrolling in one of the three Division II member schools in Puerto Rico.