NCAA Approves Changes in Academic Policies
By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Education, August 8, 2005

The NCAA's crackdown on Native American images and icons dominated the headlines, but the association's governing bodies announced several other significant policy decisions last Friday.
The NCAA:

* Adjusted its new policy on academic progress so that Division I athletes who leave college in good standing to enter professional drafts or for other certain reasons do not count negatively in the rates that measure their colleges' success in educating students.

* Determined what the penalties will be for those Division I institutions at which academic progress and graduation rates are repeatedly at the “extreme” low end of the range for NCAA members. After a warning the first year, those chronic offenders would face scholarship and recruiting limitations in the second year, the offending team would be ineligible for postseason competition in the third year, and all teams at the college would be barred from NCAA playoffs in the fourth year.

* Said it would let its members vote in January on whether to overturn a set of scholarship increases for women's teams, after nearly a third of Division I colleges objected to the measure. That vote would be the first ever attempt by Division I members to "override" a decision of its Board of Directors since the NCAA shifted to a representative governance structure in 1997.

* Directed all NCAA member institutions to review their policies on alcohol advertising and marketing during their television broadcasts and in their stadiums and arenas.

Full article can be seen at http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/08/08/ncaa