A quick refresher on the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate:
Collegiate sports teams that fail to achieve an APR score of 925 - equivalent to a 50% graduation rate - may be penalized with the loss of scholarships. A perfect score is 1000. The scores are calculated as follows:
The APR is calculated by allocating points for eligibility and retention -- the two factors that research identifies as the best indicators of graduation. Each player on a given roster earns a maximum of two points per term, one for being academically eligible and one for staying with the institution. A team's APR is the total points of a team's roster at a given time divided by the total points possible. Since this results in a decimal number, the CAP decided to multiply it by 1,000 for ease of reference. Thus, a raw APR score of .925 translates into the 925 that will become the standard terminology.
NC State's revenue sports have kept out of trouble (though, with a score of 929 in the latest report, football is near the 925 threshold).
The NCAA is moving ahead with a plan to make APR even more important:
NCAA president Mark Emmert told ESPN Radio host Scott Van Pelt on Thursday that the association's Division-I Board of Directors has approved a plan to institute a minimum academic standard for teams participating in the NCAA Tournament, with roll-out expected by 2016, according to The Bylaw Blog. Teams falling under a 930 on the Academic Progress Rate would apparently being barred from the next NCAA Tournament.
If this had been in place last year, Florida State, Syracuse, and national champion UConn would have been ineligible for the NCAA tournament. By Andy Staples's count, 101 schools would have been ineligible for the 2011 tournament, which is nearly a third of I-A. (And had this applied to football, NC State would have been ineligible for the Champs Bowl.)
[Edit: The above paragraph is all kinds of wrong, but in my defense it made sense at the time. There is a year of lag time between the end of the academic year and the reports based on said year, which puts two years between figures and enforcement. Figures from the 2008-09 academic year were published in June 2010, figures from the 2009-10 acadmic year figures were published in May 2011, etc. Which means that sanctions based on the 2009-10 APR score would apply to 2011-12. Therefore NC State would have been fine to play in the Champs Bowl, while UConn and Florida State would have been perfectly eligible for the 2011 NCAA tournament. (You're still boned, Syracuse, due to a sub-standard score in 2008-09.)]
This is still several years away, and if there was one thing Sidney Lowe took care of at NC State, it was his program's academic standing. State had an APR of 980 in 2009-10 and the multi-year APR is even better: 985. That's good enough to put NC State in the 90th percentile within college basketball. So it's not something Mark Gottfried has to fret about right away, but for Gottfried and coaches everywhere, it's just one more concern, one more headache.
Staples also noted that only one SWAC school would have been eligible for the tournament last season:
The SWAC's NCAA tourney rep last year would have been Alcorn State -- by default. The only school with an APR high enough to be eligible.An APR cutline for tourney eligibility helps schools that can afford academic support teams to hold poor students' hands. Sorry, SWAC.
The reason for the delay is APR is a four-year rolling measure. So after 2014-15, you have three years of data under the new rule.
Okay - just off phone with Carrie Leger - APR specialist at NCSU. Understand this deal much better now...the basics to follow....Last yr's 929 is a cumulative of the previous 4 years, but NOT a straight avg of the four. NCSU's last 4 years have been 921, 936, 924, 936
it's surely close - but she said you factor in # of scholarship athletes and some other stuff too.