General Southern Conference

SoCon Earns High Marks In GSR

SPARTANBURG, S.C. - Southern Conference institutions consistently outperformed the national averages in men's and women's sports as part of the NCAA Graduation Success Rate data, released today (October 27).  The team scores released included data from the four-class averages taken from the 2000-2003 cohorts, which allowed student-athletes six years to graduate.  As a conference, 72.9 percent (113 of 155) of teams in the Southern Conference beat the national average for their respective sport.

Six league schools met or exceeded the Division I average in every women's sport sponsored by the conference, while four schools met or exceeded the national average in all men's sports.  Two members of the SoCon exceeded the Division I graduation rate average of 79 percent in every sport sponsored by the league. 

Developed by the NCAA as part of its academic reform initiative, the GSR is used to assess the academic success of student-athletes.  Thirty-nine women's teams and 20 men's teams posted perfect scores of 100.  Eleven of the 12 member institutions fielded multiple teams with scores of 100. 

Of the 155 squads competing the Southern Conference, 59 (38 percent) earned a perfect score of 100 which equals last year's total. Broken down among gender, 52 percent of the women's squads (39 of 75) earned perfect scores of 100, while 20 of 81 men's teams posted a perfect mark.

Seven of nine SoCon teams met or exceeded the Division I FCS average (64 percent) in football.  Nine of 12 member institutions topped the NCAA Division I average in men's basketball (65 percent) while all 11 women's basketball programs met or beat the national benchmark (83 percent).

ABOUT THE GSR

The Graduation Success Rate was developed by the NCAA as part of its academic reform initiative to more accurately assess the academic success of student-athletes.

  • The GSR holds institutions accountable for transfer students, unlike the federal graduation rate. The GSR also accounts for midyear enrollees and is calculated for every sport.
  • Under the GSR calculation, institutions are not penalized for outgoing transfer students who leave in good academic standing. These outgoing transfers are essentially passed to the receiving institution's GSR cohort.
  • By counting incoming transfer students and midyear enrollees, the GSR increases the total number of student-athletes tracked for graduation by more than 36 percent.
  • The NCAA also calculates the federal graduation rate for student-athletes, because it is the only rate by which to compare student-athletes to the general student body.
  • The most recent Graduation Success Rates are based on the four entering freshmen classes in Division I from 2000-01 through 2003-04.
  • There are almost 105,000 student-athletes included in the most recent four classes using the GSR methodology, as compared to just over 77,000 counted in the federal rate.
  • This year marks the ninth year that GSR data have been collected. The NCAA began collecting GSR data with the entering freshman class of 1995. The latest entering class for which data are available is 2003