There may be more brains behind student-athletes’ brawn than common stereotypes typically allow. The NCAA released graduation rate statistics for student athletes in the class entering in 1995 and graduating by August 2001, noting a 60 percent graduation rate for Division I student-athletes, the highest total since the NCAA began tabulating commencement rates in 1984.
“This is very encouraging. This is the first graduating class of student-athletes who were required to have 13 high school core courses in order to participate in athletics as freshmen,” Dr. Francis Lawrence, president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, and chair of the Division I Board of Directors Task Force on Academic Reform, said in a NCAA press release. “The results show that we are on the right track.”
Georgetown, considered in the Division I-AA section for the survey, tied with Holy Cross for the second highest graduation rate, with 90 percent of student-athletes graduating in six years or fewer.
“Georgetown consistently ranks at the top of its division for student-athlete graduation, and we were outranked only by Davidson this year,” assistant sports information director Kevin Rieder said.
Davidson College ranked first in Division I-AA, with a composite graduation rate of 91 percent.
Among the Big East conference schools, Georgetown was tied for the top spot with Notre Dame. Georgetown had the highest graduation-rate for male student-athletes in the conference (94 percent) and the third highest rate for female student-athletes (87 percent), with only Notre Dame and Boston College placing higher.
“For the purposes of the survey, Georgetown was considered in Division I-AA because our football team is in that division and the football team usually has the greatest number of athletes,” Rieder said. “It’s hard to compare Georgetown among the other schools in the Big East because these schools are full-scholarship athletic and schools and we are not. It’s easier to compare Georgetown, athletically to the schools in Division I-AA, because we don’t offer the kind of athletic aid that other schools do.”
Georgetown’s student-athlete graduation rate is up three points from 2001 and down one point from 2000, when it also placed second, tied with Duke, and behind Northwestern by one point.
According to Rieder, the athletic department ensures that athletes maintain satisfactory grades so that athletes remain eligible to compete and so they graduate in four years. “We make sure our athletes are monitored in class and that they are keeping their grades up. There are study halls available for student-athletes so they can get their work done, and, all students have access to academic advisers, which athletes may use as needed,” Rieder said. “Outside of that, there is nothing particularly special that Georgetown does to maintain its high graduation-rate.”
Male student-athletes in Division I graduated at a rate of 54 percent, up from 51 percent the year before, while the graduation rate for female student-athletes remained steady at 69 percent.
The change in requiring 13 core courses in high school instead of 11 may have accounted for the increase in graduation rates. “It’s impossible to say whether the increase in core courses has a causal relationship with the increase in graduation rates, but the two increases did happen concurrently,” NCAA director of research Todd Petr said in a press release.
The NCAA is currently considering changing the required number of high school core courses required for freshman athletes to have eligibility, raising the minimum to 14 effective August 2003, and to as high as 15 or 16 in the “near future if ongoing research supports such a change,” according to the NCAA.
Last year, the NCAA and USA Today established a scholarship fund for schools that have the highest graduation rates in their respective divisions. This year’s winning institutions included Rice University in Division I-A (91 percent), Davidson College in Divisions I-AA and I-AAA (91 percent), University of Hawaii at Hilo in Division II (100 percent), and Regis College (MA) in Division III (100 percent).
The NCAA considers only student-athletes who receive athletic aid from their college or university in the survey results. Calculated graduation rates are not adjusted in the event that an athlete dies, turns professional, transfers, or drops the sport due to ineligibility.
