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Nine University of Texas at Austin Teams Earn NCAA Public Recognition Awards for High Academic Marks

May 18, 2011

INDIANAPOLIS — A total of nine athletic teams at The University of Texas at Austin will receive public recognition awards for their latest multi-year NCAA Division I Academic Progress Rate (APR), the NCAA announced Tuesday (May 17). These teams include baseball, men's basketball, men's golf, men's tennis, women's golf, women's indoor track and field, women's outdoor track and field, softball and women's tennis.

The awards are given each year to teams scoring in the top 10 percent of all squads in their respective sport, based on their most recent multi-year Academic Progress Rates. The most recent APRs are multi-year rates based on scores from the 2006-07, 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10 academic years. According to NCAA President Mark Emmert, top-performing teams this year posted APR scores ranging from 977 to a perfect 1,000. The number of teams in some sports may exceed 10 percent, depending on the number of perfect scores.

"We're really proud of our student-athletes," said DeLoss Dodds, men's athletics director. "They work as hard in the classroom as they do in their sport. To have nine of our 20 teams in the top 10 percent of the APR is an awesome achievement. This weekend, we also will have about 50 student-athletes graduate from this great university. Times are good."

"This is another example of our coaches recruiting the right kind of young people who are as dedicated to their academic success as they are their athletic training," said Chris Plonsky, women's athletics director. "We are really proud of our student-athletes, coaches and staff."

The NCAA tracks the classroom performance of student-athletes on every Division I sports team through its innovative APR, which provides an annual scorecard of academic achievement. The APR provides a real-time look at a team's academic success by tracking the academic progress of each student-athlete during the school year. The APR accounts for eligibility, retention and graduation in the calculation and provides a measure of each team's academic performance.

Full multi-year APRs for all Division I sports teams, including the teams receiving public recognition awards and penalties for low-performing teams, will be announced May 24.

For more information, contact: Nick Voinis, Texas Athletics, 512-471-2151.

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1 Comment to "Nine University of Texas at Austin Teams Earn NCAA Public Recognition Awards for High Academic Marks"

1.  Thomas Palaima said on May 22, 2011

Before anyone reading this gets overjoyed, i.e., fooled, please read the pages of the national Chronicle of Higher Education and learn what a fraud the NCAA APR and Graduation Success Rate (GSR) are.

Gerald S. Gurney, the head of the national organization of athletic academic advisers with decades of experience writes that "the NCAA's relaxation of academic standards has challenged the academic integrity of higher education."

He calls the APR and GSC "manufactured," i.e., gimmicks designed to keep players eligible. And he is right.

See: http://chronicle.com/article/Stop-Lowering-the-Bar-for/127058/

See also:

http://chronicle.com/article/The-NCAAthe-Athletes-It/127181/

This second article exposes the fact that the NCAA APR permits athletes to complete as few as two courses in a semester and requires GPA's of 1.8 at the end of their freshman year, 1.9 at the end of their sophomore year, and 2.0 at the end of three years. When we learn that the AVERAGE student at UT Austin has a 3.09 GPA, we see that these standards for what they are.

The UT Tower has on it carved in big plain letters: "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free." Read and be freed of this kind of deceptive spin that perpetuates the abuse of student athletes.