MU student-athlete graduation rates on the rise

The MU student-athlete graduation rate ranks highly in the Big 12.

By Zachary Murdock

Published April 13, 2010

With only three weeks of classes left in the semester, graduation nears for many seniors. For student-athletes, this time can mark the end of an athletic career or the beginning of a professional one.

Student-athlete graduation success rates are used to track their success in the classroom. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed using this statistic to grant or deny teams entry into the NCAA men's basketball tournament in March.

Duncan proposed schools with graduation rates less than 40 percent be banned from playing in the tournament. At a 36 percent graduation rate, Missouri was among the 12 listed, but GSR statistics might be misleading.

"Over time, we should set a higher bar," Duncan said in the news release. "But it's a minimum, a bright line, which every program should meet to vie for post-season honors."

Released each year, the GSR is defined on the NCAA research Web site as a six-year portion of student-athletes who graduated compared against those who entered universities on institutional aid.

In March, the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at Central Florida published an annual study of the graduation rates of schools that participated in this year's NCAA basketball tournament. The study compared the GSR scores of all the teams playing in this year's tournament and found 12 teams had graduation rates of less than 40 percent.

"Without question, 36 percent is unacceptable," Athletics Department Academic Services Director Joe Scogin said. "As a department, we understand that these numbers are something we need to improve on."

Before being published, GSR data is analyzed by the NCAA and is compared statistically to Division 1 averages, but the process takes several years.

As published by the NCAA, the most current GSR statistics include the incoming freshman class of 1999, which produce freshman-cohort graduation rates for 2002-2003. Because of the process of publishing and analyzing GSR data, the most current published numbers range anywhere from seven to 11 years old.

The NCAA does publish more current statistics regarding student-athlete academic success. The Academic Progress Rate is defined on the NCAA research Web site as a term-by-term measure of academics and retention for student athletes and was developed as an indicator for eventual graduation rates.

In addition to the APR, MU keeps its own unofficial data on student-athlete success. Scogin said the athletics department is very optimistic about future rates and MU's numbers are only going up.

MU had a 75 percent graduation rate for all student-athletes last year, and the athletics department projects an 80 percent rate this year, Scogin said. Those numbers, published by MU, are made public each May.

MU's APR statistics have been very encouraging, Scogin said. Although the NCAA does not compare statistics within conferences, MU has led the Big 12 Conference in APR standings five years in a row, and this year, 16 of 20 sports rank in the conference's top three.

"Those are real-time statistics," Scogin said. "Those students are in your campus and your teams from semester to semester. We like looking at that number, because it tells us what's happening at Missouri right now."

The MU athletics department focuses on a statistic called the "exhausted eligibility graduation rate," Scogin said.

That rate excludes student-athletes who choose to transfer schools or leave MU early to play sports professionally. The statistic only counts student-athletes who exhaust all their years of eligibility at MU.

Based on the exhausted eligibility graduation rate, men's basketball has a graduation rate of 86 percent, football a rate of 88 percent, and MU has a 95 percent graduation rate for all student-athletes who have exhausted their eligibility at MU.

"We want to graduate every student that exhausts their eligibility here," Scogin said. "They have given us a chance to help them graduate from the University of Missouri."

MU also has programs to help student-athletes succeed academically, Scogin said.

"Our goal is to help our student-athletes graduate, regardless of whether or not that helps our numbers," Scogin said. "I think the numbers are a byproduct of what the program is really all about."