Academic Progress Rate

The Academic Progress Rate is a measure introduced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the nonprofit association that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, to track student-athletes chances of graduation. The Academic Progress Rate (APR) is a term-by-term measure of eligibility and retention for Division I student-athletes that was developed as an early indicator of eventual graduation rates.

It was introduced in the wake of concerns that the majority of athletes were in fact not graduating with qualifications to prepare them for life.

The mandatory publication of graduation rates came into effect in 1990 as a consequence of the "Student Right-to-Know Act," which attempted to create an environment in which universities would become more devoted to academics and hold athletes more accountable for academic success. However, the graduation rates established by the NCAA showed poor results, for example they reported that among students who entered college between 1993 and 1996 only 51 percent of football players graduated within 6 years and 41 percent of basketball players. Feeling pressure to improve these poor rates the NCAA instituted reforms in 2004, including the APR, a new method for gauging the academic progress of student athletes. It was put into place in order to aid in the NCAA's goal for student-athletes to graduate with meaningful degrees preparing them for life. The principle data collector was Thomas Paskus, the Principal Research Scientist for the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Originally, if a program's four-year average APR fell below 925, that would trigger sanctions like scholarship losses, and a four-year APR of 900 or lower triggered "historical penalties" like postseason bans. In 2011, the NCAA voted to raise the maximum APR that triggers penalties to 930.

The APR measures how scholarship student-athletes are performing term by term throughout the school year. It is a composite team measurement based upon how individual team members do academically. Teams that don’t make the 930 APR threshold are subject to sanctions. The NCAA works closely with the schools that do not meet the threshold in order to improve them. When a school has APR challenges, it may be encouraged or even required to present an academic improvement plan to the NCAA. In reviewing these plans, the national office staff encourages schools to work with other campus units to achieve a positive outcome. The staff also works with APR-challenged schools to create reasonable timelines for improvement. While eligibility requirements make the individual student-athlete accountable, the Academic Progress Rate creates a level of responsibility for the university.

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