When the NCAA announced its sweeping academic reform package two weeks ago, President Myles Brand likened the stringent enforcement of classroom standards on college sports to an historic "sea change".
But for academic and athletic all-star Duke and its beyond-average student-athletes, the new eligibility standard that will begin to undergo evaluation this fall will make few waves in the Athletic Department.
The Division I-wide plan, nearly three years in the making, will be known as the incentives/disincentives program. It will take aim at those universities falling below a calculated "cut rate" of academic progress and standing, punishing them by withholding scholarships and even revoking postseason opportunities and NCAA membership. But with a 93 percent student graduation rate and an 89 percent graduation rate for student-athletes on scholarship firmly in hand, the Blue Devils should not have much trouble making the cut, athletic officials said.
"Our eligibility, retention and satisfactory progress at Duke exceed standards," Assistant Director of Athletics for Academic Services Brad Berndt said, adding that the University will continue with the status quo.
Indeed, Duke athletics' 89 percent graduation rate far outperforms the national mark of 62 percent, as calculated by the NCAA when it looked at scholarship athletes over a six-year period beginning in 1996. And even in the academically strong ACC, only Virginia and Wake Forest come close to Duke's scholarship student-athlete graduation rate; their marks of 81 and 76 percent, respectively, give the rest of next year's expanded conference an average mark of 59.75 percent.
But the new system takes graduation rates as only part of the equation in finding an institution's academic-progress rate. This point-based system tracks initial eligibility and the progress of each scholarship athlete's eligibility to provide schools with a report card. A failing grade will be determined by a new NCAA committee after data is collected over the next year and a half.
"For the most part this just makes all other schools have continuation requirements that are a lot like Duke's," Kathleen Smith, professor of biology and faculty athletic representative, wrote in an e-mail.
Even though Duke surpasses the initial eligibility limit and does not envision running into problems with the more hard-hitting disincentive part of the NCAA's plan, the most tangible effect the new reforms may have on the Blue Devils would be in recruiting. With other schools facing pressure to go after more recruits with higher academic standing coming out of high school, Duke could see increased competition in the pool of well-balanced student-athletes in which it consistently swims.
"Say they say you have to graduate 60 percent," Senior Associate Athletic Director Chris Kennedy said. "Then the programs may be forced to recruit differently. They may go after the high-SAT kids."
Kennedy continued to say that the vaunted men's basketball program should not run into any trouble with the APR "cut rate", which figures to be a difficult bar to set.
"It will never be down where the 'cut rate' is," he said of the team's academic progress, where Duke's graduation rate stands at 67 percent over the same six-year period, still 23 percentage points better than the national men's basketball average. "When they are dealing with state schools, where [the] institution-wide graduation rate is 52 percent, they will have to keep the bar low."
Jake Poses contributed to this story.
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