Академический прогресс спортсменов: система APR NCAA

The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a measure introduced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the nonprofit association that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, to track student athletes' chances of graduation. The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a term by term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates. It was introduced in the wake of concerns that the majority of athletes were not graduating with qualifications to prepare them for life.

The mandatory publication of graduation rates came into effect in 1990 as a consequence of the "Student Right to Know Act," which attempted to create an environment in which universities would become more devoted to academics and hold athletes more accountable for academic success. However, the graduation rates established by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) showed poor results, for example they reported that among students who entered college between 1993 and 1996 only 51 percent of football players graduated within 6 years and 41 percent of basketball players. Feeling pressure to improve these poor rates, the NCAA instituted reforms in 2004, including the Academic Progress Rate (APR), a new method for gauging the academic progress of student athletes. The principal data collector was Thomas Paskus, the principal research scientist for the NCAA. Originally, if a program's four year average APR fell below 925, that would trigger sanctions like scholarship losses, and a four year APR of 900 or lower triggered "historical penalties" like postseason bans. In 2011, the NCAA voted to raise the maximum APR that triggers penalties to 930.

The APR measures how scholarship student athletes are performing term by term throughout the school year. It is a composite team measurement based upon how individual team members do academically. Teams that don't make the 930 APR threshold are subject to sanctions. The NCAA works closely with the schools that do not meet the threshold in order to improve them. When a school has APR challenges, it may be encouraged or even required to present an academic improvement plan to the NCAA. In reviewing these plans, the national office staff encourages schools to work with other campus units to achieve a positive outcome. The staff also works with APR challenged schools to create reasonable timelines for improvement.

Teams that fail to achieve an APR score of 930—equivalent to a 50% graduation rate—may be penalized. A perfect score is 1000. The scores are calculated as follows:
Each student athlete receiving athletically related financial aid earns one retention point for staying in school and one eligibility point for being academically eligible. A team's total points are divided by the points possible and then multiplied by 1000 to yield the team's APR score. Example: An NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) team awards the full complement of 85 grants in aid. If 80 student athletes remain in school and academically eligible, three remain in school but are academically ineligible and two drop out academically ineligible, the team earns 163 of 170 possible points for that term. Divide 163 by 170 and multiply by 1000, yielding the team's APR for that term: 959. The NCAA calculates the rate as a rolling, four year figure that takes into account all the points student athletes could earn for remaining in school and academically eligible during that period. Teams that do not earn an APR above specific benchmarks face penalties ranging from scholarship reductions to more severe sanctions like restrictions on scholarships and practice time. The first penalties under the APR system were scheduled to be announced in December 2005. Starting with the 2008–09 academic year, bans from postseason competition were added to the penalty structure. The most severe penalty available is a one year suspension of NCAA membership, which has not yet been assessed as of 2010–11. Prior to 2010–11, only four teams had received postseason bans. The results of the NCAA's APR report for that year, which covered 2006–07 through 2009–10, saw eight teams receive that penalty—five in men's basketball and three in football. Most notably, Southern University became the first school ever to receive APR related postseason bans in two sports. The highest profile penalty in that year's cycle was handed down to defending NCAA men's basketball champion Connecticut. The Huskies lost two scholarships for the 2011–12 season due to APR violations. For the 2014 football season, Idaho and UNLV received postseason bans due to low four year APR averages. However, UNLV submitted "updated" APR score to the NCAA raising the score needed for postseason eligibility.

There are many questions regarding how the NCAA will enforce the new policy for football. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is its own entity and decides the college football postseason, thus making them the governing body for college football. President Gary Ransdell said there is uncertainty on how the new standard relates to the BCS. "The BCS is an independently run enterprise, yet it involves NCAA member institutions," he said. "So does this 930 rule also determine eligibility for BCS games? I think that's yet to be ironed out." Many college basketball players leave before they graduate, and the ones that leave in bad academic standing cause the APR to go down. This issue is seen throughout college basketball. To exemplify this phenomenon for collegiate basketball: if the 930 postseason ban had been in effect for the 2011–12 season, then 99 teams would have received postseason bans. Compiling college athletes' graduation rates stemmed partly from press coverage that 76 to 92 percent of professional athletes lacked college degrees and from revelations that some were functionally illiterate. In the 2010–11 cycle, the NCAA granted nearly 700 APR adjustments in the latter category, out of a total of over 6,400 Division I teams. (The APR is calculated based only on scholarship players already, not walk ons) Numerous other sources, from sports conferences to schools themselves, document much lower graduation rates for college football and men's basketball and baseball players than for general students. Compounding matters is that only about 57 percent of all college students complete a bachelor's degree in six years.

As part of this strategy, the NCAA strives “to ensure the academic commitment of student athletes and to increase the likelihood that they will earn degrees.” Along these lines, in 2005 the NCAA formulated a tool called the Graduation Success Rate (GSR) for Division I schools. GSR basically removes athletes who leave an institution in good academic standing from the denominator and adds those who transfer in and eventually graduate to the sample. Thus, GSR recognizes that college athletes (based at least partly on their interests and abilities) may take a different path to graduation than other full time
students and in some aspects is an accurate yardstick. The latest single year GSR for all NCAA Division I athletes (who began college in 2004) was 82 percent. GSR for Division I FBS football was 67 percent, for men's basketball 66 percent, for women's basketball 84 percent, and for baseball 72 percent.

Another indicator of the academic performance of student athletes is the Federal Graduation Rate, FGR, which is published by the university. In computing the FGR the only data that is relevant is whether the student athlete graduates within six years of enrolling in the institution. This differs from the APR because it makes no distinction of the purpose a student has for leaving and whether or not they leave a university in good academic standing. If a student leaves their enrolled university to pursue a professional athletic career this counts the same under the FGR as someone who leaves because they failed out of school; on the other hand, by the APR standards a student that leaves while still in good academic standing receives one point out of two which distinguishes them from someone that left because of academic failure. With that in mind, FGR rates usually reflect a value lower than the APR at elite athletic institutions that consistently send athletes to the professional leagues prior to graduation.

While the numbers represented in the APR have a certain significance, there can be misrepresentations for people unfamiliar with what the APR is showing. For example, the APR only applies to students that receive athletic financial aid, which is by no means all varsity athletes at a university. Another common misuse of the data occurs when APR results are compared between universities. This is usually not a valid comparison unless it is viewed alongside the graduation rates for non athletes at the institution. For example, one institution may have an APR representing that only 50% of athletes are on track to graduate which seems like athletes are under performing at the university. However, if the graduation rate for non athletes is also 50% then the low graduation rate for the athletes is not a student athlete problem, but a university wide problem. Furthermore, it is not always relevant to compare APR scores across universities because the academic rigors between universities differ. For example, at some high performing academic universities freshman struggle with eligibility because the workload is hard to deal with initially, but in the end, those students find academic success.