National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2010

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Jun 9, 2010 1:57:20 PM

While the NCAA's Academic Performance Program and its accompanying Academic Progress Rate have improved student-athlete academic performance, challenges remain regarding the relatively low APRs earned by teams in men's basketball and the difficulty faced by institutions with fewer resources.

Men's basketball's average multiyear APR is 940, up seven points from last year's number but still the lowest multiyear average posted by any sport in Division I (though the sport does not earn the lowest single-year APR in the current year). Those low figures are driven largely by retention issues. The sport has a high percentage of transfer students overall, and many come from two-year colleges. Data show that student-athletes who transfer, especially from two-year institutions, are far less likely to earn degrees.

The NCAA formed the Basketball Academic Enhancement Working Group in 2008 to study the issue and recommend solutions to improve the academic performance of student-athletes in the sport. The group was patterned after a similar body that found success working on academic issues in baseball.

The basketball group was not as successful as baseball, though, and several pieces of legislation crafted based on the group's recommendation were defeated in the 2009-10 legislative cycle. The central objections ranged from competitive equity to the proposals not going far enough. The most sweeping (and controversial) recommendation, which would require summer school for men's basketball student-athletes and give coaches the opportunity to interact with their players in that time, has yet to be introduced as formal legislation.

Walt Harrison, president at Hartford and a member of the basketball group, said the problems in men's basketball are "more dogged" than those in baseball. Players are less prepared when they come to NCAA institutions, a factor over which the NCAA has little control. The sport's position as a major revenue-producer is also a factor, making people more protective of any real or perceived competitive advantage – or disadvantage.

"There's a lot of disagreement about how to proceed," Harrison, also the chair of the Committee on Academic Performance, said. "I think they made very wise proposals, and some of the membership doesn't feel that they are in their best interests, so they are opposing them."

Jack Evans, another member of the basketball group and of the Committee on Academic Performance, believes a disconnect exists in the membership between the legislative proposals they voted on and the work of the basketball group. Unlike the baseball group's work, which was presented to the Board of Directors as a package that needed to be treated as such legislatively, the basketball proposals were introduced as separate measures not closely tied with the group's report.

"We couldn't produce a package in which all of the pieces were ready to be in legislative forum. The message to the Board of Directors was not ‘Here's a package that you ought to treat as a package,' " Evans said. "The results were divided into smaller proposals and are less directly associated with the work of the basketball group. They are just kind of like other proposals in the legislative process."

Evans, the faculty athletics representative at North Carolina, and others recognize that work remains in basketball, and that further nurturing of the summer school model proposal will likely be on the horizon.

Low-resource institutions

Another challenge for the Committee on Academic Performance and others is how to help low-resource institutions, especially with their men's basketball Academic Performance Rates. Many of the lowest-resource schools are also Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and the NCAA has set up an advisory group to work with those institutions. The CAP also established the Supplemental Support Fund, a grant program designed to help promote academic support at institutions with the lowest resources.

The issue affects a relatively small number of Division I schools, especially when compared to the struggles in men's basketball. But for those in that small number, the issue is significant.

Pete Boone, athletics director at Mississippi, said that as chair of the appeals subcommittee of CAP he sees similar struggles in low-resource institutions that appear before his group. While many institutions recruit student-athletes with academic profiles that might not indicate future success, the lower-resource schools don't have the funds to support those student-athletes once they arrive on campus. Boone sympathized with those programs.

"I don't believe they are taking in any less of an academic-profile student-athlete than a lot of schools; they just don't have the academic support system there," he said. "We (at Mississippi) spent $1.5 million last year (for academic support). That's a lot of money for a lot of schools."

Tom Burnett, commissioner of the Southland Conference and a CAP member, has some experience with low-resource institutions. He said several of the schools in his conference move on and off the "low-resource list" every year. The list includes the lowest 10 percent of Division I, defined by a strict formula that includes Pell Grants and per capita spending per student.

Burnett said the issue is larger than athletics and speaks to institutional mission.

"We've got some institutions that are doing wonderful things that serve greater purposes, doing exactly what their communities, regions and states need them to do," Burnett said. "Some of these universities give students a chance academically that other institutions wouldn't give. But with that comes risks, and we've seen the risks play out."

Burnett said he admires the NCAA and the CAP for creating the Supplemental Support Fund, but he believes that limited pool of funding will never be enough to solve a problem. For Harrison, who once promised the Board that the Academic Performance Program would not be a way to "pick on" institutions without funding, the issue is personal.

"I made that promise, but I haven't been able to deliver on it as much as I'd like," he said. "It's complicated because for some of these institutions, including the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, their missions are considerably different than other institutions in Division I. The NCAA should not be about defining institutional mission. It should be a safe home for people with all sorts of institutional missions."

Harrison acknowledged that institutional mission is one of the filters that will help an institution escape serious penalties, but he said that the goal of the Academic Performance Program is to help all student-athletes and institutions to do better.

"I still see this personally and for the NCAA as a major challenge," he said.