SPARTANBURG, S.C. – Southern Conference institutions earned high marks in the NCAA Graduation Success Rate scores released Tuesday. League teams combined for a GSR of 86 percent which tied for the ninth-highest conference total in Division I and the seventh-best among FCS conferences. The team scores released include data from the 2007 cohort, which allowed student-athletes six years to graduate.
The Southern Conference tied for the highest women’s basketball GSR in the nation with perfect score of 100 percent. Women’s basketball programs have recorded a GSR of 93 or better in three of the last four years.
The league’s men’s basketball teams earned a GSR of 83 percent, which was the seventh-best mark in
Division I. The score of 83 represented a seven-point increase over last year’s 76.
Southern Conference football programs earned a 77 percent GSR which ranked as the ninth-highest figure in the nation, while the league’s baseball programs posted an 87 GSR. That figure ranked eighth nationally among all Division I conferences.
Developed by the NCAA as part of its academic reform initiative, the GSR is used to assess the academic success of student-athletes. The GSR measures graduation rates at Division I institutions and includes students transferring into the institutions. The GSR also allows schools to subtract student-athletes who leave their institutions prior to graduation as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they remained.
Southern Conference GSR Rankings:
Sport GSR Rank
All Sports 86 T-9th
Men’s Basketball 83 7th
Women’s Basketball 100 T-1st
Football 77 9th
Baseball 87 8th
ABOUT THE GSR
The Graduation Success Rate was developed by the NCAA as part of its academic reform initiative to more accurately measure the success of Division I student-athletes.
· The GSR takes into account the many different academic paths followed by today’s college students.
· Unlike the federal graduation rate, the GSR holds institutions accountable for transfer students. The GSR also accounts for midyear enrollees and is calculated for every sport.
· By counting incoming transfer students and midyear enrollees, the GSR increases the total number of student-athletes tracked for graduation by approximately 37 percent.
· 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.
· The NCAA also calculates the federal graduation rate for student-athletes, because it is the only rate to compare student-athletes to the general student body.
· This year marks the 13th year of GSR data that 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 2007.