NCAA Seeks Right Way to Score APR Grades

By Mark Alesia, mark.alesia@indystar.com
October 29, 2004

When the NCAA passed a framework in April for measuring the academic performance of teams -- and then giving punishments or rewards -- association president Myles Brand hailed it as a "sea change."

Before anything changes, though, the NCAA has to decide what score makes a school subject to scholarship losses starting late next year. The cutoff point will confirm or dispel concerns by critics that the new program won't have teeth.

The issue was discussed Thursday by the Division I Board of Directors, which met in Indianapolis and heard from Walter Harrison, president of the University of Hartford and chair of the Committee on Academic Performance. The committee oversees the system of rewards and punishments.

The cutoff is expected to be finalized in January at the NCAA Convention. Arriving at the figure is complicated. A flat rate -- which would treat an urban commuter school the same as an Ivy League school -- might not work.

"I wouldn't describe it as a struggle. It's an intellectual challenge -- how do you account for different (university) missions?" Harrison said. "How do you account for different things that influence different sports? We're trying to think our way through all that."

The measurement is called the Academic Progress Rate (APR). Teams lose points for players who are academically ineligible and players who leave the program for reasons including entering a professional league.
Any Division I sports team that scores below the APR cutoff won't be allowed to replace the scholarship of a player who left school while academically ineligible. That scholarship wouldn't be available again for one academic year.

A trial release of figures from the 2003-04 academic year, carrying no punishments, is expected in January.
The APR is a percentage that might be confusing at first because it doesn't correlate to the percentages commonly used for academic letter grades. In other words, 70 percent isn't necessarily a "C," or average, grade.

The NCAA hasn't released publicly any of the APR data it has collected from schools.

"We're looking at a new metric that's different than graduation rates," Harrison said. "That takes a little bit of time getting used to. It's a bit like talking about SAT scores or ACT scores. It's a different way of looking at things."

A percentile cutoff point probably will not be used.

"If you're always using the bottom percent, whatever it is -- 33, 25, 10 -- someone's always got to be in that bottom percent," Harrison said. "Our idea is that (percentile) might not, by itself, be worthy of a penalty. We want to try to figure out some level where we feel your performance isn't good enough."

A new formula for calculating graduation rates will also be part of the program, but it will take years before the first results are known.

The board also discussed the possibility of tweaking minimum standards for membership in Division I-A, which consists of the 117 top football schools. The standards, implemented in August, include a minimum football attendance requirement of 15,000, which a handful of schools, including Ball State, failed to meet last year. The issue is expected to be settled in January.