March 1, 2006
ATLANTA–Georgia Tech’s student-athletes are performing well in the classroom, according to the latest NCAA Academic Performance Rate (APR), highlighted by two Tech teams that earned perfect scores.
The Tech golf and women’s swimming programs lead the way with perfect scores of 1000 in the current data, which is for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 academic years combined. No Tech programs are subject to contemporaneous penalties.
Tech’s football and men’s basketball programs each achieved an APR of 948, well above the Division I averages of 929 for football and 927 for men’s basketball.
The Rambling Wreck baseball team’s score of 974 is more than 40 points higher than the Division I baseball average of 931. Tech’s women’s basketball program also scored well at 977, compared to a Division I average of 958.
Other top performing Tech teams including women’s track and field, with a 990 score for both indoor and outdoor, women’s tennis at 983, volleyball at 978 and men’s swimming at 971.
“Overall, we are pleased with this initial APR report, and we feel that it is a positive reflection on the work of our student-athletes in the classroom and the support system that we have in place for them,” said Phyllis LaBaw, who is in her first year as Tech’s associate director of athletics for academic services.
The APR is a key component of the NCAA’s academic reform structure, which is designed to ultimately improve graduation rates for student-athletes. Under the APR formula, each scholarship student-athlete is scored each semester, receiving one point for remaining academically eligible and one point for being retained. One point is deducted for each student-athlete who is not academically eligible, and one point is deducted for each student-athlete who leaves school due to academic status or transfer to another institution.
The NCAA Division I Board of Directors, on which Georgia Tech President Dr. Wayne Clough serves, established a score of 925 (out of 1000) as acceptable for each sport. A sport program falling below 925 would be subject to scholarship reductions, losing scholarship equivalency for any student-athletes who receive an “0-for-2” score, meaning that he or she left school and was not academically eligible upon departure. However, the 925 score will be initially adjusted with a temporary confidence boundary to account for small squad sizes until more data is collected.
As a member of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors, Clough has stressed the need to supplement graduation rate data, which measures what has happened in the past rather than what is currently happening.
“We’re very pleased to see these numbers and take great pride in the success of our student-athletes,” said Clough. “Performance in the classroom as well as performance on the field continues to be our priority at Tech.”
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