Latest Acedemic Progress Reports Released

Tuesday the NCAA released its annual Academic Progress Report (APR). The APR is the NCAA's new way to gage a school's academic progress on a sport by sport basis. The scoring system is a bit complicated, so instead of trying to confuse you by trying to explain it, I'll let a professional journalist do it.

From the St.Louis Post-Dispatch:

The scores are calculated by giving teams one point for each athlete that stays in school and another for each athlete that remains academically eligible. The point totals are then divided by the team’s maximum points possible to derive a score equivalent to a percentage.

Per NCAA guidelines, teams that score below 925 and have a student leave school academically ineligible can lose up to 10 percent of their scholarships. Known as immediate penalties, these scholarships can be lost each year and not awarded until the following year.

Starting next year, teams that receive three straight years of historical penalties (below 900 APR) face the potential of restrictions on postseason competition for the team, in addition to scholarship and practice restrictions.

Over 700 Division I teams had APR scores below the required 925, however only 218 were punished, ranging from warnings to scholarship restrictions. Among BCS schools, eighteen schools were penalized, eight each in men's and women's basketball and two in football. Around the Big Ten, the most notable punishment was Purdue losing one scholarship for men's basketball.

On the bright side, the NCAA also released a list of schools receiving Public Recognition Awards, given out to a team finishing in the top 10 percent of the APR in their sport. Michigan received four such awards, for baseball, men's and women's golf, and women's tennis, with both golf teams and the women's tennis teams receiving perfect scores. The only Michigan team to come close to missing the APR guidelines was the men's basketball team, with a score of 927. You can get a complete breakdown of every Michigan sport here. Every Big Ten team received at least one award, and Northwestern led the conference with 8 awards. Some other notes from across the country, Duke had the most awards of any BCS school with 12 awards, and Yale led all schools with 28 awards (note that there are only 29 possible sports in which to win awards). As should be expected, each team in the Ivy League received awards, with Colombia taking home the fewest, 9, although only 5 other non-Ivy teams had higher totals (behind the US Naval Academy, Duke, Georgetown, Boston College, and Stanford).

The new NCAA policies seem to be working, as over the last four years scores have increased in 26 of the 29 sports covered by the APR (men's ice hockey, men's swimming, and men's water polo decreased). Overall women's teams had an average score of 969, while men's teams had an average of 951.