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Hiegert Defends Academic Record of CSUN Athletes : Survey: Matador athletic director attacks published study ranking Northridge’s graduation rate 260th out of 262 NCAA Division I schools.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

If Athletic Director Bob Hiegert was fretting about Cal State Northridge’s academic reputation being tarnished by a survey published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, he was veiling it well Wednesday.

Of the 262 NCAA Division I schools ranked according to the graduation rate of their athletes, Northridge came in at No. 260. Only Texas Southern and Texas-Pan American fared worse than Northridge with its 10.7% graduation rate.

“That data needs to be asterisked,” Hiegert said.

The survey studied students and recruited athletes who enrolled in current Division I schools (there were 56 recruited athletes at CSUN) in the fall of 1984, and Hiegert’s objections to the results start right there.

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“They were comparing apples and oranges,” he said.

In 1984 and in every school year before this one, Northridge did not compete at the major-college level in athletics and was not governed by the NCAA’s more stringent academic standards for Division I.

Those standards vary from sport to sport. But in football, for example, junior college transfers are required to have an Associate of Arts degree before accepting a scholarship to play for a Division I school. These athletes, therefore, already had earned a minimum of 48 units and were on track to graduate within five years--the span required by the survey.

Northridge, which remains at the Division II level in football, is allowed to accept players who have not earned AA degrees. Players of major-college ability who lack degrees become blue-chip Division II recruits and, as a result, a large number of Northridge athletes often were behind a five-year pace to begin with, Hiegert said.

Hiegert pointed out that Northridge athletes included in the survey graduated at about the same rate as the regular CSUN student population--10.7% to 15.5%--during the five-year span considered.

“The goal of the thing is to show the number of people improving their lives and getting a degree,” Hiegert said. “It’s too bad it had to be over a five-year period. That’s not what people are doing here.”

The average school term of a Northridge graduate, Hiegert said, is slightly more than 6 1/2 years.

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“The problem with Cal State Northridge athletes progressing is the same problem of Cal State Northridge,” Hiegert added. “People are just not moving through at a timely fashion.”

One reason for that, Hiegert surmised, is the relatively low cost (about $400 per semester) of a Cal State university education.

“If you’re a student at USC, Loyola or Pepperdine and you face the prospect of paying your own way once you’re off scholarship, there’s a little more pressure to succeed,” he said. “A lot of kids are not as committed to (finishing up as fast) as they would be if they were paying 10 times that amount.”

Even so, Northridge has begun to develop a system to aid the academic progress of its athletes. Starting this year, athletes who are freshmen, junior college transfers or have a grade-point average below 2.5 (on a scale of 4.0) are required to attend a minimum of four hours of study hall during the season and eight hours out of season.

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