Academics and athletics can go hand in hand, according to recently released data by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The NCAA reports a 77-percent national graduation rate among student-athletes. The data analyzed students who began college between 1997 to 2000 to see if they graduated within six years.
According to Jennifer Kearns, associate director of public and media relations for the NCAA, the data applies only to those students who hold athletic scholarships.
Among the Division-I sports analyzed, men's basketball, football and baseball showed the biggest improvement, Kearns said.
"Men's basketball jumped up eight percent from our previous study, while football Bowl Subdivision [previously known as 1-A] and baseball showed an improvement of 3.5 and two percent respectively," Kearns said.
Although individual schools are responsible for graduating their student-athletes, the NCAA has a system of rewards and penalties, such as scholarship reductions, to encourage academic progress, Kearns said, adding that NCAA President Myles Brand has set an unofficial graduation-rate goal of 80 percent.
"He is confident this goal will be met in the near future by the majority of the schools," Kearns said.
James Booz, University associate athletic director for academic affairs, noted that the study released by the NCAA is more flexible than the available federal statistics.
"The NCAA Graduation Success Rate is different from the federal rate because it includes those students that transfer to other schools," Booz said. "For the federal rate, if a student transfers to a different institution than the student is considered not to have graduated."
According to Booz, the University shows a 94-percent graduation rate among athletes, adding that it has measures in place for helping student-athletes achieve academic success.
"Over the last two years, the athletic department has increased their staff," Booz said. "We have 15 full-time staff members that are responsible for providing academic support services to our students."
Among the services provided are tutoring and mentoring programs.
"We help them organize their time so they can manage both athletics and academics in a responsible way," Booz said.
According to Booz, six sports stand out when it comes to academic achievement at the University: men's swimming and tennis and women's lacrosse, field hockey, tennis and volleyball.
"Around 250 of our students are recipients of the ACC honor roll," Booz said, a recognition assigned to those student-athletes that hold a GPA of 3.0 or higher.
In addition, Booz noted that the University boasts four University athletes on the All-American academic teams.
"We do pretty well in comparison with other schools of the area," Booz said.
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