At its meeting this week, the Faculty Senate heard from the university's faculty athletics representative, Donn Ward, who briefed the group on important new NCAA rules that will impact academics and also shared the latest data on the current academic performance of NC State's student-athletes.

The NCAA recently passed two controversial new regulations - one that may make it easier to gain initial eligibility and another that may make it more difficult to keep that eligibility.

The change being most hotly debated is the new regulation over initial eligibility. Under the NCAA's former guidelines, a prospective student-athlete must have scored no lower than an 820 on the SAT and have a 2.5 high school GPA in 13 core classes in order to qualify for four full years of eligibility. However, faced with a number of lawsuits over the fairness of the SAT and ACT, the NCAA has created a sliding index beginning in 2002-03 that lowers the SAT or ACT requirement but increases the expected high school GPA.

At its most extreme, a high school athlete who made the absolute minimum of 400 on the SAT could still qualify academically under NCAA rules if he or she has at least a 3.55 GPA in 14 core classes. Such situations are likely to be rare, but there could be many who score in the 700 range on the SAT who now could qualify by meeting the required core GPA, just over 3.0.

Despite the lower entrance standards put into place by the NCAA, Ward assured members of the Faculty Senate that the university intends to stick to a higher standard.
"The chancellor, the provost, (athletic director) Lee Fowler and I met the other day, and we just don't think it's either in the university's or the student's best interest to come here if they have such a low SAT, because ultimately you have to graduate," Ward said. "That's the expectation."

Fowler, speaking before Faculty Senate two weeks ago, echoed that thought.

"We will assure you that we all agree that we are not going to take kids that we do not think have any chance of graduating from this university, and that is what we have always done," Fowler said.

However, Ward did recognize that the temptation will be there for coaches.

"Lee is saying we need to hold the line, and I believe that our coaches will accept that graciously, but it's going to put them in a bind," Ward said. "They are going to be competing against institutions who are going to want to win. Graduation is secondary for some."

All student-athletes will find it more difficult to maintain eligibility through their college years under the other new change handed down by the NCAA. Under the new regulation, student-athletes must complete 40 percent of their degree requirements by the end of their second year in school or lose athletic eligibility. The percentage would then increase to 60 percent by the end of the third year and 80 percent by the end of the fourth year.

While there seems to be general agreement that the rule is well-intentioned in trying to increase graduation rates, several see potential pitfalls. In his earlier Faculty Senate visit, Fowler pointed out that while NC State requires 130 hours to graduate, Duke only requires 96, so meeting the 40 percent bar will be much harder at NC State. On Tuesday, Senator Roby Sawyer pointed out that student-athletes will also have a difficult time earning the required number of hours if they change majors.

Ward followed up by asking, "in our own departments, how many students come in as freshmen and graduate in the curriculum they started in? Very few. For athletes, that's going to be a significant consideration if they come in majoring in biology and decide they want to change to English, or vice versa. They're going to lose a lot of credits either way, and that could significantly impact their eligibility."

The need for some form of NCAA regulation to help bolster graduation rates was underscored by the latest data regarding NC State's own graduation rates.

Ward's report Tuesday showed that the six-year graduation rate for NC State's student-athletes was 52 percent, 10 percent below the average for the general student body for the same period (1995 to 2001).

The six-year graduation numbers were particularly low for the men's teams - just 35 percent. Men's basketball graduated 0 percent from the 1995 cohort, while baseball graduated just 18 percent and football just 39 percent.

At least part of the blame for the lower numbers was attributed to players who transferred from NC State to other institutions after men's basketball coach Herb Sendek and football coach Chuck Amato were hired. Although those players may have gone on to graduate from somewhere else, they still count against NC State's numbers.

The five-year graduation rates, which measured the 1996 cohort, showed numbers much closer to those of the general student body. The rate for all recruited student-athletes for that span was 55 percent, compared to 57 percent for all freshmen who entered the university in 1996.

The five-year graduation rate for recruited student-athletes in men's basketball was up to 75 percent, but football dropped to 26 percent, the lowest in 11 years.

As for grade point averages, NC State's student-athletes had a combined cumulative average of 2.84 at the end of the spring 2002 semester, down just .03 from a year ago and still many points above the average of a decade ago.

Among individual teams, there were several groups on both sides of the success ledger. On a positive note, the volleyball team posted a GPA above 3.0 for the eighth straight year. The women's golf team posted a 3.42 GPA, matching the highest average of any team in any sport in a dozen years. Men's basketball posted a 2.61 GPA, its best ever, while women's soccer posted their third straight score of 3.33 or higher. Women's cross country and track posted a 3.18, its best score in eight years, and both women's basketball and women's swimming posted their highest totals in five years.

On the other side of the coin, the men's swimming team saw its team GPA free fall from 2.73 last year to 2.46 this season, its lowest score ever. Men's tennis fell from 2.81 to 2.40, a nine-year low, and the wrestling team posted a 2.49 GPA, its lowest in seven years.

Overall, Ward said he was confident in the commitment to academics being shown by the university's coaches and administration.

"I have a lot of confidence in Lee, I have a lot of faith in the efforts of Phil Moses and our academic support program, and certainly administration, chancellor and provost alike," he said. "They are on top of these issues…There is a support structure in place, and we have coaches, I think, that are trying to have the best of both worlds (both academic and athletic success)."

Posted November 15, 2002

Return to the Bulletin homepage