NCAA May Revise Graduation System

The NCAA is considering legislation it hopes will more accurately measure graduation rates and determine whether athletes are making sufficient progress toward earning an academic degree.

The current tracking system uses information compiled by the U.S. Department of Education. The flaw in that system, critics say, is that athletes who transfer are automatically counted as nongraduates -- even if they go on to earn a degree from their new school. Under a new proposal, the academic progress of those students would be tracked at their new school and not counted against the graduation rate of the school they left.

Legislative changes won’t be voted on until the annual NCAA convention in April, but officials said in a conference call on Wednesday that they hoped to have standards established by the fall of 2005 -- with penalties to punish programs that don’t comply in place by the fall of 2007.

Under one proposal, Todd Turner, chairman of the NCAA Division I Incentives/Disincentives committee, said data from four academic years -- this one and the next three -- would be studied before violators faced sanctions such as probation, loss of scholarships and recruiting opportunities, a ban on preseason and postseason play, and restricted NCAA membership.

Until then, Turner said, his committee is recommending that universities be prohibited from recruiting to replace an academically ineligible athlete who leaves school.

Turner said the committee’s proposals are aimed at achieving three goals: “ ... to identify habitual [underachievers] and aim the disincentives at that group ... to try and make it simple and ... to be fair.”

“I think we’ve done the first thing,” Turner said. “Whether we’ve made it simple or not, time will tell. I think we’ve definitely made it fair. We used all available research data available to us to arrive at this format. Getting people comfortable with the process is a little more complicated than we’d have liked, but that’s the price you pay to be fair and achieve your overall mission.”