Written by: Nicole Caporaso and Brett Thompson; Infographic by: Logan Ulrich
The NCAA will begin rewarding Division I schools for academic success beginning in the 2019-20 school year according to an October 27th ruling by its board of directors.
“This landmark change benefits schools at which student-athletes succeed academically and graduate,” NCAA President, Mark Emmert, said. “The creation of an academic distribution unit underscores the NCAA’s commitment to putting its money where its mission is – with students.”
Schools must qualify for funding based on one of three set criteria:
- An overall, single-year Academic Progress Rate (APR) average among all sports of at least 985.
- An overall Graduation Success Rate (GSR) of 90 percent or higher.
- A student-athlete federal graduation rate that is 13 percentage points greater than that that of the entire student body.
According to the NCAA, monitoring the APR of university athletics was implemented in 2003 as a way to hold institutions accountable for the academic progress of their student-athletes and is a way of measuring eligibility.
APR is calculated as a points system, where each athlete who receives athletics related financial aid earns one point for staying in school and an additional point for maintaining academic eligibility.
A team’s total points are then divided by the maximum points possible and is finally divided by 1,000. Overall, 1,000 equals a perfect score. Teams must maintain at least a 930 four-year average and a 940 average for the last two years in order to participate in NCAA championships.
Michelle Brown, Director of the Athletic Support Program for Student-Athletes at UNC-CH, said maintaining academic eligibility is a complex issue, as the university has its own requirements, in addition to the NCAA’s rules.
“It basically comes down to GPA, progress towards degree and credit hours,” Brown said. “There’s certain times you have to declare a major. You have to meet benchmarks after every semester. Some of UNC’s (requirements) are a little higher than the NCAA’s requirements, so students can be eligible with the NCAA, but not eligible with UNC and vice versa.”
The GSR measures how many student-athletes graduate from their university after four years. Each score represents a different class of athletes who come into the university. For example, the score for student-athletes who enrolled in the fall of 2013 won’t be determined until after the spring of 2017.
The third criterion measures the success of student-athletes relative to the entire student population of the university.
The funding for this project will be provided from the NCAA’s new 8-year, $8.8 billion television contract with CBS and Turner. Rewards will be based on the annual increase in said eight-year contract, ultimately growing to a rate of $541,368 per school in 2031-32.
UNC-Chapel Hill athletic director Bubba Cunningham believes that this money will greatly benefit the academic support universities provide for student-athletes.
“We could always use additional tutors, we could always use additional learning specialists, advisors and counselors,” Cunningham said. “There’s an unlimited amount of services that you can provide, so if you have additional funding, you can provide more services for more students.”
But while Cunningham is in favor of schools receiving funding from the latest TV contract and spending it on academics, he does not believe that the new criteria is the correct way to allocate the money.
“I like the idea of rewarding academic success, but I don’t think the APR and the GSR are the appropriate metrics to do that,” said Cunningham. “Those metrics were not designed for that purpose and I know in my view they’re not the ones we should be using.”
Cunningham believes that those two metrics, created to determine baselines for eligibility, should not be used as the determinations for incentive. Instead, he would rather see the NCAA distribute television money under the previous format.
“The whole idea, in my view, is to create opportunities for students to get financial aid through a scholarship and to provide students an opportunity to perform in a sport, which is the old revenue model. They’re gonna keep that in place, but now they’re gonna add this academic component,” Cunningham said. “I would rather see us add to previous allocations, which was sports scholarship and sponsorship.”
Under the new standards, UNC-CH would fail to meet any of the three criteria needed to cash in on academic bonuses. The latest data shows that the university’s overall APR falls .3 short of the needed 985, overall GSR eight percentage points shy of the required 90 and a federal graduation rate that is not 13 percentage points greater than that of the student body.
This failure, upon a closer look, can potentially be traced back to the paper class scandal that plagued the university for several decades.
APRs for numerous UNC teams from 2005 through 2015 show a dip after the university’s academic scandal concluded in 2011, after an 18-year duration.
Notably, the men’s basketball team, which won national championships in 1993, 2005 and 2009 had a pre-scandal average of 991.4, but a post-scandal average of 957.2.
It was the basketball team that took the largest hit after the end of the university’s paper classes, with a 34.2 decrease in APR. Baseball and men’s fencing followed, with 30.4 and 18.8 decreases, respectively.
In contrast, 12 teams had higher post-scandal averages, while others maintained a steady number.
Jan Mann, coach of the UNC women’s golf team, said her team’s streak of a perfect APR from 2005 to 2015 is something she has been aware of and is also a source of pride.
“Anytime you have a student-athlete, they have a competitive spirit and I think we keep that in front of them and they don’t want to be the one to break the record,” she said. “It’s a reflection of the program and of the university, in my opinion, and as a coach, their number one priority in coming to school is to get a great education.”
Mann coaches one of two UNC teams that maintained a 1,000 score throughout the 10-year period. The women’s fencing team also kept a perfect APR.
Mann said she doesn’t believe some sports make it harder to maintain a higher academic progress report rate, as her team typically practices the maximum 20 hours a week, like most other teams.
“If we’re doing qualifying, typically in practice we’ll do three to four hours, so they’re going to class, then coming to practice, then typically going to study hall meeting with tutors, so their day is an extremely full day,” she said. “Fortunately, for me, my student athletes are very self-motivated. We just have to guide them a little bit, but we don’t have to push too much, so that’s great.”
A large factor in the academic success of the university’s teams is the work Brown and her colleagues do in providing support for student-athletes in all stages of their collegiate career.
“With the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes, we basically start working with students as they’re being recruited, so before they even come to UNC we start to have conversations with them,” Brown said. “We talk about their interests and their major, we let them know about UNC and the curriculum and the programs here and what it’s like to be a student here and the expectations.”
Brown said the focus of her department is mapping out a plan for success for the student-athletes, which includes ensuring a pathway to graduation and determining a plan for success, which may involve setting up a schedule for tutoring, meeting with a learning specialist or suggesting engaging in group study sessions, as well as other useful tools.
“We also make sure with the classes that they’re taking, they see academic advisors,” Brown said. “Then we verify with a secondary look at their NCAA eligibility to make sure they’re making progress there too.”
Brown said high academic standards come with the territory of coming to UNC and those expectations are something that is echoed throughout her office, as well as within the entire athletics department and the university as a whole.
“We invite students to campus to be a part of our program who are very capable students and athletes and we work to support them in the complexity of being a very good athlete and a student,” she said. “We have really high expectations and a lot of our students, they’re thriving here and they’re doing really well.”
Like Mann, Brown said no matter what sport a student-athlete plays, the energy and effort which go into both the academics and athletics is a hefty demand.
“Each sport is a bit different in its own, but they are all very time-consuming for students just for the fact that there’s travel and competition,” Brown said. “It’s not the same across the board for any one student or all sports, but there’s a lot of dedicated students to their classroom, their work, their academics, but also to their sport.”
Ultimately, Bubba Cunningham’s goal is to continue to add to programs he has helped implement since his arrival on campus in 2011.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to using some of that money for additional support for our academic programs for student athletes,” Cunningham said. “We’ve invested in that significantly in the last five years, and I think our investment will probably be greater going forward.”
