The NCAA News - News & Features

Clearing the air on the CLEARINGHOUSE

Officials say program achieving mission set by membership

BY SALLY HUGGINS
STAFF WRITER

The recent spate of complaints about student-athlete eligibility problems might lead a person to believe that the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse is a colossal mess that should be abandoned.

But the chair of the NCAA committee with responsibility for the program says the clearinghouse is achieving what the membership intended when it was overwhelmingly approved at the 1993 Convention: It is providing the means for ensuring that student-athletes who compete at NCAA institutions are academically qualified for college.

"The clearinghouse is working," said Charles N. Lindemenn, director of athletics at Montana State University-Bozeman and chair of the Special Committee to Oversee Implementation of the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse. "We have to keep in mind the volume when we think about how it's working."

The clearinghouse successfully processes the academic records of 99.5 percent of prospective student-athletes in a timely manner, Lindemenn said.

"The problem is with about one-half of one percent," he said. "But when you look at the numbers, that means probably every school has a problem they are dealing with. We are focused on that one-half of one percent."

The clearinghouse came to be because of concerns over the last decade about the academic well-being of student-athletes. It was an outgrowth of the recommendations of the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which in 1991 called on colleges to reform intercollegiate athletics by improving standards and ensuring academic integrity.

From the time it began making certification decisions in 1994, the clearinghouse has been controversial. This year, however, there is more friction than ever because of the implementation of stricter Division I initial-eligibility standards. Criticism from segments of the membership has been severe, and most media commentary on the subject has faulted the clearinghouse for being arbitrary and inefficient.

But defenders of the clearinghouse say that its decisions certainly are not arbitrary and that a significant portion of whatever inefficiency exists can be attributed to factors beyond its control.

And the clearinghouse still has friends in high places.

The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame and cochair of the Knight Commission, said the clearinghouse's purpose is to ensure that incoming student-athletes are better prepared academically, and it is accomplishing that mission.

"Anything we can do to upgrade the academic standing and progress toward a degree for athletes is for the good," Hesburgh said.

Creed C. Black, president of the Knight Foundation, noted that much effort was spent raising academic standards for intercollegiate athletics and that the clearinghouse provides a means of determining whether prospective student-athletes meet the new standards.

Suffers from perception

But even as the clearinghouse accomplishes that goal, it suffers from a widespread image of slowness -- a perception that is fed by accounts of athletes being held out of practice or competition every August while they await clearinghouse rulings.

In fact, the clearinghouse staff spends much of its time just before the beginning of a new school year reviewing records of students who already have been through the process and received a ruling of "not certified," said Robert A. Oliver, NCAA director of legislative services and staff liaison to the clearinghouse.

"It is a perception of a log jam precipitated by the high schools -- since the middle of June -- trying to get core courses approved that were not previously approved as core courses," Oliver said. "The students have been processed and found 'not certified,' so the process has worked as it should."

The perception that the clearinghouse "isn't working" is exaccerbated by problems with high schools that are experiencing the recruitment and certification of a student-athlete for the first time.

In such cases, the high school previously has had no reason to pay careful attention to clearinghouse rulings on core courses and curriculum changes, Lindemenn said.

In many cases in which an athlete has not been certified, the clearinghouse has received a late-summer request from a member institution to look at records for a second -- or even third -- time, in an effort to get the student certified. In the past two months, the clearinghouse has processed about 9,000 requests to look at records more than once.

The problem of core courses

The clearinghouse not only ensures that student-athletes meet the Association's academic standards for eligibility. It also ensures that all NCAA institutions have equal access to information about the academic eligibility of prospective student-athletes.

The biggest problem encountered by the clearinghouse in serving those functions -- a problem that wasn't anticipated -- is the difficulty of determining whether the wide variety of courses that are considered core courses by the nation's high schools actually meet standards that have been adopted by the Association.

NCAA Bylaw 14 specifies which courses may be considered to meet the core-course requirement, but course names used by high schools may not clearly match the courses that are described in the legislation.

High schools list their core courses by title annually on the NCAA's Form 48H, which is reviewed by the clearinghouse staff in February. Using only the course titles supplied by a high school, the clearinghouse applies criteria for evaluation developed by the NCAA Academic Requirements Committee and informs a school if any of its courses will not be considered a core course. Such decisions are made without information regarding actual course content, and no individual student-athlete is involved at that stage.

High schools receive a report indicating courses that do not meet NCAA core-course standards. They then have the option of appealing a decision or advising their students that a particular course cannot be used to meet core-course requirements, said Calvin Symons, director of the clearinghouse.

In challenging a decision of the clearinghouse, a high school can submit documentation, such as a course description or course content. Using that additional information, a course is re-evaluated and then the high school is informed of the decision.

The clearinghouse currently has about 19,000 48H forms on file, representing about three-fourths of the high schools in the United States.

In addition to handling core-course determinations, the clearinghouse reviews transcripts that high schools submit for students who are registered with the clearinghouse.

Transcripts of 121,536 members of the 1996 high-school class were received by the clearinghouse and processed, Symons said. Colleges subsequently requested information for 53,368 of those students and for approximately another 6,000 1996 graduates who did not register.

Problems avoidable

Many of the problems experienced in the certification process are avoidable.

Oliver strongly urges high schools to advise students who need to meet initial-eligibility criteria to take courses that already are approved as core courses, rather than take a chance that a course that has not been approved will be accepted on reconsideration.

Oliver hopes that high schools and colleges are more aware of requirements as they advise prospective student-athletes. He also urges member institutions to be certain that a recruited student who has not already met core-course requirements is taking approved courses during the final semester of his or her senior year in high school.

As for establishing whether a course is a core course, high schools should work a year ahead, thus ensuring that student-athletes can be properly advised in preparation for college.

A high school should seek approval of a core course during the February before the subsequent academic year, Oliver said. Unfortunately, high schools often accept the clearinghouse's core-course decisions, only to challenge a decision about a course later.

For the system to work best, the clearinghouse in late summer should be certifying student transcripts rather than core courses, said Kevin C. Lennon, NCAA director of compliance and staff liaison to the Academic Requirements Committee.

"We are seeing more NCAA institutions challenging these (core-course) decisions right before the academic year begins," Lennon said.

The Academic Requirements Committee is attempting to eliminate some of the last-minute crunch by limiting the time in which a high school can challenge a course ruling. In the future, high schools will have 90 days after receiving a clearinghouse decision to dispute a finding. After that time, the clearinghouse decision will stand.

Waiver process

When a member school disagrees with a clearinghouse decision regarding a recruit's eligibility for competition, that institution has the option of applying for an initial-eligibility waiver.

Because increased academic standards go into effect this year, the national office has assigned additional staff members to help process initial-eligibility waiver requests in a timely manner, Lennon said.

The staff has worked with members of the NCAA Council Subcommittee on Initial-Eligibility Waivers to determine precedents that the staff can use to make decisions on some waiver requests. Using those precedents, the staff can approve or deny those waiver requests quickly.

In anticipation of an increase in waiver requests, three members also have been added to the Council subcommittee, which acts on requests that cannot be handled by the staff. Subcommittee members receive packets of waiver requests by mail and conduct a weekly conference call to handle the increased volume.

Waiver requests are being handled as quickly as they were a year ago when there were fewer requests. Still, there is no escaping a "seasonal" crunch because the clearinghouse cannot issue final certifications until transcripts are received after high-school graduation, Lennon said.

The NCAA Administrative Committee, seeking to alleviate this problem, recently acted to allow students with legitimate waiver requests to continue to practice -- but not compete -- while waivers are being considered.

Efforts continue

Meanwhile, the Special Committee to Oversee Implementation of the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse is working steadily to improve the clearinghouse's response to member institutions.

Lindemenn said the clearinghouse will continue to adapt to the needs of the membership, while ensuring academic integrity.

"We have to be more responsive to changes in curriculum, changes in teaching," he said. "We need to be more sensitive to what the high schools have to do in their mode of instruction. We need to look at the special needs, such as learning disabilities.

"We need to maintain our standards and maintain our diversity."

The Knight Commission's Hesburgh noted that problems like delays in providing certification are mechanical, but can be fixed.

"If you have a problem, you fix it but you don't throw out the whole thing," he said.