NCAA Schools Give Scholarships Despite Grade Rule

A study shows that rising numbers of athletes who don’t meet academic standards for first-year eligibility under the NCAA’s Proposition 48 are receiving athletic scholarships at NCAA Division I schools.

According to the study, which included responses from 183 of the 293 Division I schools, such partially qualified players got 6.5% of the athletic scholarships given for the current school year, up from 5.1% in 1988-89 and 4.5% the previous year.

“Certainly, there’s something that’s encouraging the coaches to keep on signing these people,” said NCAA research director Ursula Walsh, who compiled the study. “The coaches may be feeling more comfortable with their experiences with these people that they had or other coaches had. Maybe they’ve been able to maintain them.”

However, she said it is too early to predict success for Proposition 48.

“All we know now is that coaches are not discouraged from signing Prop. 48 people,” she said. “The reason for this study is so that we’ll really know why. We won’t have to guess.”

Under Proposition 48, a partial qualifier is a player who graduated from high school with a grade point average of at least 2.0, but either did not meet the minimum grade point average in core curriculum courses or the minimum score on a college entrance exam. Such players can’t even practice with a team the first year but can become eligible as sophomores by meeting minimum academic requirements.

Starting next year, the regulation will be replaced by Proposition 42, which prohibits athletic scholarships to partial qualifiers.

Walsh said the NCAA would continue to track incoming freshmen classes, particularly those from 1986 to ‘87, the first to enter college under Proposition 48 restrictions.

“What we’re looking at right now is what the perseverance was through the freshman year, and how many became eligible as sophomores,” she said.