The NCAA announced on Wednesday that graduation rates for NCAA football players have increased to an all-time high of 69%, an improvement of three percentage points in the past year. Additionally, the graduation rates for black players jumped five percentage points in the last year to 61%.
Despite this encouraging news, the academic records of many of the top football program schools were not as encouraging. No. 1 Auburn University, No. 2 Oregon State, and No. 3 Boise State, as well as 16 others of the top 25 place-holders in the Bowl Championship Series, ranked beneath the four-year average. Fewer than half of Oklahoma and Arizona’s players ended up graduating.
Football was not the only area in which graduation rates were lower than hoped; of NCAA men’s basketball teams, three of the eight regional finalists has four-year graduation rates lower than 50%.
“Our work toward enhancing the opportunities for student-athletes to be successful academically isn’t finished, but we continue to make progress,” said Mark Emmert, NCAA president. “Our student-athletes are engaged on their campuses, they are competing hard in all that they do, and they are achieving important successes on and off the field and court. The fact that we’ve had improvements year after year is very encouraging.”
The latest incoming class of athletes will be the first to be subject to all of the NCAA’s academic reforms. These reforms include stricter progress-toward-degree requirements and the types of courses that will determine a player’s initial eligibility.
“In many ways, our work has just begun,” said Walt Harrison, president of the University of Hartford. Hartford heads the NCAA’s Committee on Academic Performance. “As the culture of academic reform grows stronger each year, we will see more and more improvement.”
