<p>^ Fair enough, hawkette, I’ve never looked at the way the NCAA calculates GSR which is very different from the graduation rate. But as I look at the data you link to, several things stand out. First, this is looking in the rear-view mirror; the data are aggregates of the 1999-2002 entering cohorts, so it includes stuff that was going on a decade ago or more. Second, it’s still a very small N. In a typical football recruiting class of 21, losing just a couple of kids can have a huge impact (a 10% swing) in your GSR. People sometimes talk and write about this a little breathlessly as if hundreds of kids were involved. Not so. But by the same token, just a few more graduates can bring your GSR way up. Michigan reports that their GSR for all student-athletes went from 68% in 2000 to 84% in 2008. That’s quite an improvement. Not sure exactly where football fits into that, but here are the numbers they report for the football class that entered in 2002—athletes who would have exhausted their eligibility in 2006, or 2007 if they red-shirted:</p>
<p>Total in class: 21
Left team prior to exhausting eligibility: 6, of which 4 transferred in good academic standing and 2 “quit”
Exhausted eligibility: 15, of whom 13 graduated</p>
<p>Now if I understand the GSR correctly, you can exclude those who transferred in good academic standard from the total. That leaves 13 out of 17 (76.5%) graduating. But what about the 2 who “quit”? According to the NCAA, you can also exclude them if they were in good academic standing when they left (quoting: “subtract student-athletes who leave their institutions prior to graduation as long as they would have remained academically eligible to compete had they remained”). That would push the GSR for this class up to 86.7%. Of course, we don’t know from the data Michigan provides whether these athletes “quit” because they became academically ineligible, or for other reasons like lack of playing time, violations of team rules, didn’t like the weather, had a falling out with the coach, whatever. But we’re talking about 2 kids here, for gosh sakes; that’s the difference between a GSR in the mid-70s and a GSR in the mid-80s. </p>
<p>And by national standards a GSR in the 70s is actually pretty good; for all FBS-level Division I football schools, it’s somewhere in the mid-50s.</p>
<p>[Hughes</a> named director of U-M Academic Success Program](<a href=“http://www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Mar23_09/26.php]Hughes”>http://www.ur.umich.edu/0809/Mar23_09/26.php)</p>