Athletics Department reaches NCAA graduation goal

By B.J. Rains

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

The Athletics Department released updated Graduation Success Rate data on Monday, and the numbers met NCAA President Myles Brand’s goal of 70 percent.

The data, which will be officially released by the NCAA in the near future, examined a four-year average of student athletes who had scholarships when they enrolled in the falls of 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. Student athletes had a maximum of six years to complete a degree and had to remain on scholarship the entire time that they were enrolled to be eligible. Athletes who transferred from the University but were in good academic standing when they left were eliminated and did not count for or against the University’s numbers.

When the numbers were tallied, 70 percent of KU scholarship athletes who entered as freshmen from 1998 to 2001 either graduated from the University within six years or left the school in good academic standing.

“We’ve met the mark that Myles Brand set out for us, and we’re equivalent and in the same range as the institution as a whole, so we’ve met our obligation there too,” said Paul Buskirk, associate athletics director for student athlete support services. “This is the true measure of success.”

“Are we finishing what we started with the kids? Seventy percent, I’m real pleased with that.”

Two programs, women’s golf and softball, graduated 100 percent of scholarship members who arrived from 1998 to 2001.

Women’s basketball was the worst program in the department, with only 42 percent of the athletes who arrived from 1998 to 2001 receiving degrees. Current women’s basketball coach Bonnie Henrickson did not arrive at Kansas until 2004, and Buskirk said the percentage would be much higher in a few years when it included Henrickson’s data. Before Henrickson arrived, several players left the school in poor academic standing, which caused the percentage to be below the federal rate of 54 percent.

Jim Marchiony, associate athletics director, said the problem with the data was that it only tracked students who came to KU from as recently as 2001. That meant no recruits from Bill Self, Mark Mangino or Henrickson were included in the data. Students already in the program when the coaches arrived were included in the data, meaning that even though the coaches did not recruit the athletes on the list, they still played a part in whether the athletes graduated.

Men’s tennis and men’s swimming and diving, which were both canceled in 2000, were still included on the report because the programs had athletes during part of the data period.

“It’s very dated data,” Marchiony said. “It doesn’t portray a picture of what is going on today at the University of Kansas or any other school for that matter.”

The Graduation Success Rate comes with no penalty to the University, but it is used to help formulate the Academic Progress Rate, which does carry penalties. The APR is similar to a progress report that checks what percentage of current athletes are in good academic standing with the University and are on pace to graduate. The University’s APR last year caused the football team to lose two scholarships for this season.

This year’s APR will be released in April, and Buskirk said that every athletic team would be above the minimum score of 925 for the first time in school history. He said that the football team also would be getting back its scholarships.

“Our APR is going to look really good,” Buskirk said.

While the Athletics Department graduated a percentage of athletes similar to the percentage of students that the University graduated, Marchiony said that the Athletics Department’s goal was to go above 70 percent.

“Our ultimate goal is 100 percent,” said Marchiony. “That’s the goal — to see every single one of them graduate either here or somewhere else.”

— — Edited by Jennifer Torline

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