N.C. State Players Fail to Graduate : Academics: Report shows that no member of basketball team who entered school since 1985 has earned a degree.

No North Carolina State basketball player who has entered the program since 1985 has earned a degree from the school.

An academic performance report, released to the school’s board of trustees Friday, also showed that through the 1980s, only nine of the 43 eligible basketball players earned degrees. The numbers come in the wake of a Wolfpack season marked by injuries, academic suspensions, a player suicide and a 5-12 record, 1-8 in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

N.C. State Chancellor Larry Monteith said the university is working to improve the academic progress of players.

“You can’t do anything about the past--that’s over with,” Monteith said. “What we’re focusing on is trying to support the people who are here.”

Of the 34 basketball players who failed to graduate during the past decade, some went on to play professional basketball, others played in Europe, others transferred and some dropped out of school, provost Frank Hart said.

According to recent figures from the NCAA, all of Duke’s basketball players who entered in 1983 and 1984 graduated. At North Carolina, 83% of the players who entered in those years graduated within six years. At N.C. State, only 13% of the players entering classes in 1983 and 1984 received degrees.

To prevent students from slipping permanently off the academic ladder, N.C. State has introduced eligibility requirements that are tougher than NCAA guidelines. Those standards led to the suspensions of Jamie Knox, Chuck Kornegay and Donnie Seale this season.

“Students who come in won’t be permitted to get so far down with grade-point averages that it will be impossible for them to get a degree,” Hart said.

N.C. State instituted standards in 1991 that require freshmen to maintain a 1.5 GPA--a D-plus average. That minimum GPA necessary for eligibility climbs incrementally through the senior year, when a 1.9 GPA is required. Campus-wide, students with lower than a 2.0 GPA cannot graduate.

“We will succeed in both academics and athletics, I’m convinced of that,” Monteith said.

The university also has instituted new academic support and counseling programs.

In other areas, the academic performance of N.C. State athletes is looking up. The number of athletes admitted as exceptions to the university’s minimum admission requirements dipped from 23 in the fall of 1989 to three this year.

Also, the five-year graduation rate of all athletes who entered as freshmen in 1987 reached 48.7%, compared with a 55.4% rate for the entire student body.