Athletes and degrees

The system for figuring graduation rates for student athletes is not perfect, but changes are afoot — and not just in the way the numbers are worked.

University of Utah athletic director Chris Hill has been working with the NCAA on ways to improve the rating system and the overall academic standing of athletes throughout higher education. Eligibility standards, for example, are going to get tougher.

"It's tighter now than it was 10 years ago, but it will get even tighter," Hill said.

More important to the issue of graduation rates, according to Hill, there will be a move in the coming year to change how transfer students impact rates, which to the uninitiated are murky waters.

In Utah, the formula gets skewed by missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who leave school for two years at a time. At Brigham Young University, about 82 percent of male students and 13 percent of women go on missions, which is why BYU keeps different athlete graduation figures than the NCAA.

BYU affords student athletes seven years of eligibility, unlike the standard six set by the U.S. Department of Education. Of the athletes who entered BYU for the 1996-97 year, 69 percent graduated — one percentage point higher than non-athletes.

But the problem with NCAA rates is that they don't take into consideration "extenuating" circumstances, said John Johnson, athletics director at Weber State University, which also has a high LDS student population. For example, a student may finish playing sports before graduating, in which case they're counted as a non-graduate. Combined, hidden factors can make a school's rate look bad.

"I think rates are very important, because we're in the business of educating kids," Johnson said. "The point is, you miss kids because of the way you evaluate it."

Here and around the country other components like red-shirt athletes, who take classes but wait a year before playing sports, or transfers in and out of schools also muddy the waters. It's why the NCAA uses three different ways to calculate graduation rates.

One common denominator is that NCAA-generated rates apply only to those athletes who receive some kind of financial aid through a grant, tuition waiver, scholarship or through the school.

Through it all, Division I schools like Utah State University win cash awards from USA Today for graduating increasingly more student athletes. USU reported an 81 percent 2003 graduation rate for athletes, an improvement over the 45 percent who graduated in 2002. So, what do the rates really mean? Depends which ones you watch.