As the chatter surrounding players leaving school early, and their ability to profit handsomely from their name, image and likeness increases in volume, it seems like one wholesome trend is working in the NCAA’s favor. Young men and women are still putting the “student” in “student-athlete” at a pace not seen in the twenty years that graduation rates have been closely tracked for players.
College athletes are graduating at record high rates: https://t.co/FJTNxz2iLb pic.twitter.com/0nM2w6bkfj
— NCAA (@NCAA) October 16, 2019
The graduation success rate for Division I, or GSR for short, came in at 90% this year, which was the same figure achieved a year ago. This is a pretty big accomplishment, considering all of the educational, emotional, and resource hurdles students and faculty have had to deal with in the past 20 months or so.
“Today’s announcement proves that college athletes take seriously their status as students. We celebrate them and their achievements and will continue to support them as the NCAA modernizes its rules to benefit them,” said NCAA President Mark Emmert. Via NCAA.org
Interestingly enough, the data released by the NCAA supports the notion that student-athletes are graduating at a higher rate than peers who are not involved in athletics. That would seem to run counterintuitive to traditional logic, considering students are exclusively focused on academia. But the fact that the NCAA has enough to data to make this claim is a testament to the hard work student-athletes put in academically.
“Division I student-athletes are succeeding in the classroom, and we celebrate their achievements along with them, said Dianne Harrison, Committee on Academics Chair. “The Committee on Academics will continue to work to develop rules and policies that support that success.” Via NCAA.org
Division II and Division III student-athletes have also been extremely impressive scholastically as well. The Division II four year average academic success rate rose to 76%, while that same metric rose to 88% for Division III.
This year was the first in which all Division III schools were required to report graduation rates for student-athletes. These data show that student-athletes graduate at higher rates than other students at Division III schools (women +10, men +3).#whyD3 https://t.co/esR12HXeFp pic.twitter.com/qYDbOtEw6v
— NCAA Research (@NCAAResearch) November 18, 2020
