A prominent athletics director told a group of reform-minded faculty members during a March 31 seminar that current NCAA reforms will not be effective unless athletics stakeholders change their attitude toward academic integrity.

Speaking to participants at an annual conference sponsored by the Drake Group, East Carolina University Athletics Director Terry Holland said the NCAA’s Academic Performance Program will be window dressing unless “the means of reform” are addressed.

Holland, who formerly served lengthy tenures as athletics director at the University of Virginia and Davidson College, said the current reform structure anchored by the Academic Progress Rate was developed with good intentions by well-meaning people, but that the increased standards only apply more pressure on administrators and advisors to keep athletes eligible rather than influence the recruitment of students who can succeed academically.

“I’ve always supported the NCAA’s work to improve standards, but we must address the means of reform. The increased standards have not brought about better-prepared student-athletes,” said Holland, a longtime contributor in the NCAA committee structure, including as former chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee.

Holland was a guest presenter on the Drake Group’s “College Sport Reform Panel,” a featured session during the faculty-based group’s annual conference, which this year addressed “College Sport and the Academy: Getting Beyond the Problems and Finding Solutions.” The Drake Group is a collection of faculty typically outspoken about intercollegiate athletics’ influence in higher education. Members believe NCAA reforms have not gone far enough to ensure academic integrity, and they have criticized college sports as being overly commercial and at times intrusive on student-athletes’ academic pursuits.

The panel was billed as a highlight of the seminar. Joining Holland were University of Michigan Faculty Athletics Representative Percy Bates, representing the Division I-A FARs; Oklahoma State University faculty member Ed Lawry from the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (a collection of faculty senate members); Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Association; and Diane Dickman, NCAA managing director of membership services. About 50 faculty members and graduate students attended the session.

Holland said administrators and coaches needed to change the culture themselves rather than rely on methodology and processes such as the APR or the NCAA Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse, the latter which Holland called an unreliable indicator of a prospect’s academic potential.

He advocated freshman ineligibility as providing a strong “academics first” message, and that student-athletes should not be persuaded to take less-challenging coursework to meet tougher eligibility standards and increase their time commitment to athletics. He said herding athletes into easier majors “strips young men and women of a vision of what they could be academically.”

Holland also said the pressure on athletics officials to keep athletes eligible under stricter standards “blurs the lines between academic support and academic fraud.”

The BCA’s Keith agreed to an extent, saying the tougher standards and the continuing pressure to win may impose “an academic glass ceiling” on athletes who might be discouraged from pursuing certain academic careers. But Keith stopped short of criticizing the APR, saying the reform structure was a good start.

Michigan’s Bates praised the APR, claiming that it will produce “desired results” because the structure provides “the proper balance for access to education and still allowing for high-level competitive programs.”

The NCAA’s Dickman said the APR already is having an effect, since it has become part of the athletics nomenclature. “Schools are incorporating the APR into strategic plans and programming, and they are using it to hold coaches and others accountable for student-athlete academic achievement,” she said.

Panelists also were asked whether the APR would be effective without “academic disclosure,” or transparency of student-athlete academic activities, a pillar of Drake Group reform principles ever since the group was established in 1999. None of the panelists went so far as to support disclosure, though Lawry said the COIA has suggested that schools report data on student-athlete enrollment and grade patterns to an internal committee on academic integrity. Holland said he only would support disclosure “as a last resort,” and Dickman pointed out that the faculty should be trusted with the integrity of the curricula they oversee.

Another session of the Drake Group conference featured keynote speaker Richard Lapchick, director of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports at the University of Central Florida, who called for increased pressure on improved hiring practices in intercollegiate athletics.

Lapchick cited NCAA data on the lack of ethnic minorities and women in leadership positions and urged decision-makers to be held accountable by methods that could include NCAA-imposed sanctions for egregious hiring practices, campus protests and even litigation if necessary.

“There is not enough outrage from society with regard to the lack of diversity in all leadership, not just sports,” Lapchick said.