Using NCAA Academic Performance Metrics Effectively: No Slam Dunk

With big-time college sports programs reaping millions in television and sponsorship deals, the need to keep the student in student-athlete has never been more important. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) uses three different performance metrics to track the academic progress of student-athletes. However, the NCAA delegates the challenge of determining which metrics to use, or the weights to assign to them, to university administrators. In an article for The Journal of Higher Education, Larry LaForge and Janie Hodge describe four policy issues that higher education policymakers are likely to face when they determine the parameters of academic performance among student-athletes.

It is important to describe the current metrics of academic evaluation before describing the issues. A university must use at least one metric: the Federal Graduation Rate (FGR), the Graduation Success Rate (GSR), or the Academic Progress Rate (APR).

The FGR is compiled by the U.S. Department of Education and measures the percentage of student-athletes in a given cohort who graduate within six years of enrolling in a four-year institution. Midyear enrollees, such as transfer student-athletes, are excluded from the calculation. GSR is similar to FGR, but accounts for transfer students from other institutions and student-athletes in good academic standing who transfer from school prior to graduation. APR was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates, and measures retention and eligibility for each student-athlete based on NCAA- and university-specific requirements for participation in athletics.

LeForge and Hodge argue that using these metrics to improve academic outcomes among student-athletes presents four issues. First, it’s unclear if the academic performance of student-athletes should be attributed to the head coach of the relevant sports team or to the university. Although the coach recruits and manages student-athletes, the university sets standards for admission of all students (including student-athletes) and offers academic support services to those who need it. If the university uses FGR, GSR, or APR to evaluate a head coach’s job performance, then the university commits to holding the head coach partly responsible for influencing the team’s FGR, GSR, or APR, and therefore the team’s academic progress.

A second issue for consideration is whether student-athletes should be held to different academic performance standards than students who are not athletes. For example, the FGR metric holds student-athletes to the same graduation standard as other students, while GSR and APR do not.

The third issue athletic programs must examine is how universities should benchmark the academic performance of student-athletes. Higher education policymakers will need to decide whether the academic performance of student-athletes should be compared to either 1) the performance of students on campus, or 2) to the performance of student-athletes in the same sport at other universities. Again, suppose a university evaluates student-athletes using only either GSR or APR. This university then commits to benchmarking the academic performance of its student-athletes relative only to the performance of student-athletes at other institutions—not to other students at the university.

The final issue concerns the head coach’s management of both team rosters and the welfare of student-athletes. A head coach can improve the team’s GSR or APR by encouraging the departure of players who are in good academic standing at present, but might struggle in subsequent semesters. However, a student-athlete’s departure might not always be in the student’s best interests. The implication of this tension is that a university’s athletics administrators are responsible for maintaining a balance between GSR and APR management strategies and the welfare of student-athletes.

Academic policies for student-athletes have recently emerged in the news. In June 2012, a record ten basketball teams were banned from postseason tournament play in the 2012-13 season due to low APR scores. The 2011 men’s basketball championship team, the University of Connecticut Huskies, was among the teams banned from postseason play. The aforementioned metrics are receiving increased attention as athletic programs seek to balance the academic standards of their universities, the popularity of college sports, and the welfare of their student-athletes. Through the identification of the issues outlined above and corresponding policy implications, the authors bring out the challenges that university officials face in crafting sound institutional policies that govern the academic performance of student-athletes.

Feature Photo: cc/(Roger Smith)