This is stolen from our Hawkeye forum... like to get your thoughts. This has kind of flown under the radar, but the NCAA last week passed new graduation guidelines by sport. In a nutshell, schools have to now graduate 50% of their scholarship athletes (a 925 cut rate, whatever that means) each year, by sport, or be penalized with scholarship loss up to 10%. The new rule can be found at: http://www2.ncaa.org/media_and_events/press_room/2005/january/20050110_d1_bod.html Quote: "This means that a Division I-A football team, for example, could lose up to nine scholarships out of 85 for not meeting the new academic guidelines. Men’s and women’s basketball teams could lose two scholarships out of 13 and 15, respectively. Sports that award financial aid based on headcount round up the number of scholarships that could be lost". I know someone posted our graduation rates a while back and we were O.K. overall. Under Ferentz, we're now at 58% in football. Because penalities can be imposed as soon as 2006, are there any major programs out there below the 50% now? Just wondering who this will impact the most.... you can go to: http://www.bus.ucf.edu/sport/public/downloads/media/ides/Table%20-%20Graduation%20rates%202004-05%20bowl-bound%20teams.pdf to see the schools that played in 2004-05 Bowl games and their graduation rates. From this list, at least, it looks like Texas, Pitt and Louisville have the biggest problem. No wonder Mack Brown recruits so well!!! Your thoughts??
It still blows my mind that kids who leave early to play professional ball count against the school. Essentially, the school gets penalized for launching a player into the top 1% of income earners in the world. If a kid gets drafted, it should be a wash. The fact that Michael Clayton hurts our grad rate pisses me off. He was the leader on a team that won LSU a MNC and a HUGE payday - the fact that he signed his name and became an instant millionaire should take him out of the grad rate equation...
I've been the biggest opponent of NCAA Graduation Rates being used as a measuring stick as anyone around. They are the most askewed statistics it's not even funny. Not only does Clayton leaving early hurt the rate, but what makes it even more ridiculous is that any of the Junior College guys that have come in who go on to graduate from LSU doesn't help the rate. The graduation rates only consider an athlete who enters with his/her freshman class goes four years and graduates with his/her class. Any deviation from this adversely affects the statisitic and as mentioned earlier nothing can help it.:nope:
I believe some of your concerns are addressed in the new NCAA rules. There is a lot to read in their document, but the following may help: "In the long term, a Graduation Success Rate (GSR) will be established based on the number of scholarship student-athletes who graduate each year, including transfer student-athletes. The federal government currently does not count transfer students in the official graduation rates of colleges and universities. Student-athletes who leave the institution and would have been eligible to return will not be counted against the GSR." In other words (1) Juco's will count; (2) as long as "Clayton or others" had passing grades when they left, it will not count against the scholarships. In an article at CFN a while back, they used Texas as an example... even allowing for kids that went pro and transfers... their grad rate was 41%. That's horrible by most any standard.
Are there similar rules in place for students on academic scholarships? If they don't graduate after receiving one as a freshman (and later), does the pool of scholarships decrease? Hmmmm....I'm guessing not. Double standards.
Well, most academic scholarships require some kind of minimum GPA and course load. I had to have a full load and 3.0 to keep mine. I imagine that if you leave on good standing, transfer or whatever, it wouldnt count against graduation rates, but if you lost the scholarship due to grades or lack of course load, it probably would. Assuming that you didnt stay, pay your way, and still graduate on time, anyway. Thats just my guess.
