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November 2, 2007 > News > Student-athlete graduation rates remain high

Student-athlete graduation rates remain high

By Sarah Rutledge | Thresher Editorial Staff

According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, Rice’s student-athlete graduation rate is among the highest in the nation. In a statement posted on the NCAA’s Web site Tuesday, the university’s graduation rate was listed at 81 percent, which is comparable to recent years.

The graduation rates are calculated by taking students with athletic scholarships in the 2000 entering class to see how many have graduated by 2006 commencement. This format allows for 6-year programs such as architecture but discounts any transfer students or midyear students, because it focuses only on matriculants from the year 2000. The four-class average, which looks at the 1997 to 2000 entering classes and their graduation rates six years later, is 78 percent, the same as it was last year.

Assistant Athletic Director for Academic Services Julie Griswold said these statistics may also be misleading because, given 60 to 75 athletes per class, having just five athletes fail to graduate could strongly influence the numbers. Additionally, these statistics only take into account athletes on financial aid and thus do not account for every athlete on campus.

Rice ranked seventh last year in four-year average graduation rate among Division I-A schools, and Griswold said she expects this rate to rise again. She attributes this fluctuation to an aberrant year.

The graduation success rate for student-athletes, which takes into account transfer students to Rice and midyear students, is 92 percent. The graduation success rate for all Rice students is 91 percent.

This spring, the NCAA will post the academic progress rate for each school. In this system, each athlete can earn a maximum of four demerit points each school year—one for eligibility, one for retention and one each semester. The score for each player on a team is added up and taken out of 1,000. Generally, a score below 925 results in a scholarship penalty by the NCAA. The NCAA penalizes each low-APR team for each athlete who leaves the school without good academic standing in the amount of scholarships they can award the following year.

Griswold said no teams at Rice are close to this penalty, and that coaches instead try to ensure their team gets among the top 10 percent of APR scores in the country. Last year, 11 of Rice’s 16 athletic teams were honored as being the in the top 10 percent, and overall ranked third nationally, behind Yale and Dartmouth.

“At Rice, we expect every student athlete to graduate,” Griswold said. “As an athlete they have a dual role with academics and athletics.”

Griswold said she meets with coaches each semester to plan out an academic support system for each team, where they decide what regulations to implement.

“That’s kind of a coach-by-coach decision on what makes the most sense for their team,” she said. “We talk about a program to stay on track for graduation each semester and we meet with students once a week especially when they are freshmen to talk to them about what’s going on in their classes.”

She said the Athletics Department and the residential college mentoring programs work together to find tutors if student-athletes need help in a particular subject.

Jones College sophomore Tara Watts, who is on an athletic scholarship for basketball, said coaches and professors are understanding when athletes have tests or away games.

Watts said Rice is not alone in its efforts to increase student-athlete graduation rate through academics. She said athletes choose Rice for the athletic opportunity and its academic environment.

“Athletes who come to Rice know they’ll have to work hard and expect a good education whereas with other schools, they go there for the athletics,” Watts said.

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