NCAA Releases Preliminary APR Data
February 28, 2005 03:51 PM | General
February 28, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia University's combined athletic teams would have an Academic Progress Report (APR) score of 929 according to data released today by the NCAA.
The APR is based upon eligibility and retention of student-athletes over a two-year period; this will be phased in to reflect a four-year period starting in 2007-08. The NCAA will use the APR as an assessment of academic success as the APR provides a real-time assessment. In the past, graduation rates were the primary gauge of academic success by the NCAA.
"The NCAA has conducted a trial run of the APR process that will allow it to assess the results and work to refine many of the issues related to the process," says WVU director of athletics Ed Pastilong. "This is a work in progress that will give schools time to address many of the discrepancies that may exist in the collection and analysis of the data."
An APR score of 925 or higher is what teams look to meet to avoid contemporaneous penalties (involving the possible loss of grants-in-aid). Any student-athlete receiving athletic aid in a varsity sport can earn up to four points for being academically eligible and remaining enrolled in the institution. A team's APR is the total points of the roster divided by that squad's total possible points, multiplied by 1000. Some statistical adjustment (confidence boundary) may be made for smaller squad sizes, early graduates and any post-eligibility athletes involved; the NCAA will continue to review and adjust the APR structure through feedback from its members over the next six months.
Once implemented, penalties for teams falling below the specified mark could include the loss of one or more scholarships up to a cap of 10 percent of the team's total NCAA scholarship aid available. These penalties will be assessed to a team at the next available opportunity; loss of aid will generally be in one-year increments to those sports. Only one WVU squad would have faced possible scholarship reduction had the APR system been instituted this year.
Presidents and chancellors have received this informational data to show what their teams would have scored over the past two years, in order to better familiarize themselves and their institutions with the new structure.
Projected 2003-04 APR scores for WVU's varsity teams: baseball 900; men's basketball 911; women's basketball 942; cross country 1000; football 922; gymnastics 912; rowing 934; men's soccer 917; women's soccer 967; men's swimming 955; women's swimming 938; tennis 964; track 946; volleyball 981; and wrestling 853.
Under the previous process, graduation rates for WVU student-athletes have normally exceeded the national average and continue to exceed the graduation rates of the University's student body.
More detailed information is available at www.ncaa.org
