Academic Progress of UHM Student-Athletes
Peter Nicholson
Faculty Athletics Representative
December 6, 2013
Summary: Our graduation rates and our APR scores are mixed: our Federal Graduation Rate
took a sharp jump upwards last year; the more significant Graduation Success Rate went up only
slightly; and our APR scores fell a bit, with more decrease expected next year. The best news is
in our student-athlete GPAs, which continue to rise as the overall academic quality of the students
that we recruit improves. It is reasonable to expect to see that improvement reflected in our graduation rates and APR scores in the future.
As in each of my previous reports, I present here the most recent results of four available metrics
for assessing our student-athlete academic performance:




The Federal Graduation Rate (FGR)
The NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate (GSR)
The NCAA’s Academic Progress Rate (APR)
The student-athletes’ GPAs.
Each of these metrics offers a slightly different perspective. They also fail to coincide precisely:
while graduation rates and the APR are calculated only for scholarship student-athletes, our GPA
data include all student-athletes, both those with athletics scholarships and those without. The
time frame also differs. The most recent graduation rate data that we have are for students who
began as freshmen in 2006, most of whom had left UHM by the spring of 2011, but our most recent APR data is for students who were still enrolled is 2011-12, and our most recent grade reports are for 2012-13. I present the data in that order, as the different metrics represent chronologically the past, the recent past, and the near present.
1. The Federal Graduation Rate (FGR)
The FGR is simply the percentage of students who graduate within six years from the same institution. It is an imperfect measure for two reasons. First, it includes only students who start as
freshmen in the fall: freshmen who enter in January and transfers who enter at any time are simply not counted. And second, students who transfer out – no matter where they go – are counted as
not having graduated. This is the only figure that we have, however, that allows us to compare
the graduation rate for scholarship student-athletes to that of our undergraduates generally. Two
calculations are made: one for the most recent cohort to complete six years, the other a rolling
four-class rate, combining that figure with those for the three preceding years.
The following table shows the results for UHM for the last eight years. The most recent figures
are for the class that entered as freshmen in the fall of 2006 and who, given six years, should have
graduated by the end of the summer of 2012.
2
entering year
Single-year rate
student-athletes all undergrads
Four-year rate
student-athletes all undergrads
1998
1999
51%
51%
56%
51%
47%
52%
54%
53%
2000
48%
51%
50%
53%
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
53%
46%
43%
46%
61%
55%
51%
48%
50%
55%
50%
49%
47%
47%
49%
53%
52%
51%
51%
51%
2006
74%
55%
54%
52%
The student-athletes’ 2006 score obviously represents a sharp increase over the preceding years,
and for the first time, the four-year average for our student-athletes exceeds the four-year average
of our undergraduates as a whole.
Given the way that the FGR is calculated, however, it is difficult to know exactly what to make of
this increase, especially since in 2006, there was an unusually low number of fall freshman recruits: only 38, as opposed to an average of 61 during the four preceding years. We will have to
wait to see whether the 2006 figures represent a long-term trend.
UHM and its conference and D1 peers.
To assess where we stand with reference to the teams in the Big West, we have to re-calculate our
FGR, leaving out the Football team. Our one-year score without Football is 77%; the four-year
average is 56%. This table is arranged in descending order of the four-year student-athlete score.
UHM stands in sixth place out of nine, 6 points below the conference average. Because of this
year’s sharp rise, however, if we arranged the table in order of the one-year scores, UHM would
be tied for second place with Davis, 9 points about the conference average.1
Big West Conference
institution
1
2006 FGR
4-class FGR (2003-06)
SAs
undergrads
SAs
undergrads
UC Davis
77
81
77
81
UC Santa Barbara
74
80
70
80
Cal Poly
78
73
68
74
UC Irvine
72
86
65
84
Division 1 average
65
64
65
63
Big West average
68
66
62
65
Long Beach SU
68
56
59
55
HAWAI`I – no MFB
77
55
54
52
CSU Northridge
64
48
56
46
It should be noted that Cal Poly and Davis (which happen to have the two highest one-year scores) also
have Football (in the Big Sky Conference). Their Football teams are included in these scores, since we
have no way to recalculate the scores to exclude them as we can for UHM. The Division 1 average that is
listed here also includes Football.
3
UC Riverside
54
66
54
66
CSU Fullerton
48
51
51
51
UHM Football’s one-year FGR is 67, below the Department average but higher than last year’s
Football team score of 55. The team’s four-year score went down a point, from 50 to 49, in part
because the 2006 class was so small. While UHM’s Football score went up this year, most other
Football teams in the Mountain West suffered a sharp drop, for reasons that only they will be able
to explain, and the conference average dropped by 13 points. As a result, UHM’s Football team
had the highest one-year score in the conference in which it competes, and in its four-year score,
it rose from last place to seventh. This table is arranged in order of the four-year average:
Mountain West Conference – Football only
2006 FGR
institution
4-class FGR (2003-06)
MFB SAs
undergrads
MFB SAs
undergrads
Fresno State University
65
48
76
49
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
43
41
69
40
Colorado State University
45
63
68
63
Boise State University
62
31
67
29
San Diego State University
50
62
66
64
University of Nevada, Reno
43
55
62
50
50
51
61
50
Division 1A average
59
68
58
67
HAWAI`I
67
55
49
52
University of Wyoming
36
54
48
54
University of New Mexico
35
46
42
45
US Air Force Academy
na
80
na
80
Mountain West average
2
It is worth pointing out that, as last year, the non-graduates who brought down the Football
team’s FGR were not recruited by the present coaching staff, and most if not all had already left
UHM before the current head coach and most of his assistants were hired.
2. The Graduation Success Rate (GSR)
The NCAA’s Graduation Success Rate was devised in order to overcome some of the deficiencies
in the FGR, particularly in its handling of transfers. For the GSR, all freshman student-athletes
who receive athletics scholarships, including those who begin in mid-year, are counted in the initial cohort. Scholarship student-athletes who transfer into the institution, moreover, are added to
the cohort for the year in which they began school, and whether or not they graduate within the
prescribed six years is included in the calculation. On the other hand, student-athletes who have
playing time left and who leave the institution academically eligible to play are removed from the
cohort and do not count in the calculation, on the assumption that they did, or at least could, continue their education at another school. The resulting figure is a better measure of how many students with athletics scholarships actually end up with a degree, and because a significant portion
of the students who transfer out do not count as non-graduates, it is normally considerably higher
than the FGR.
2
Not including Air Force, since it does not make available its student-athlete FGR scores.
4
The GSR is reported only as a rolling four-year average. And since the GSR is calculated only for
student-athletes, our only point of comparison is other schools, not our own undergraduates. The
following table shows that while our GSR improved last year, it did not go up as much as our
FGR, and we still lag well behind the D1 average; and while the gap between our score and the
D1 average closed a bit since last year, it is still at the same point that it was two years ago:
entering years
1995-1999
1996-2000
1997-2001
1998-2002
UHM GSR
59
65
65
67
D1 GSR
77
78
77
78
1999-2003
2000-2004
2001-2005
2002-2006
69
69
72
71
79
79
80
80
2003-2007
73
81
Both men and women improved, but the gap between their scores increased slightly, after becoming much narrower last year:
1998-2002
1999-2003
2000-2004
UHM
male SAs
58
59
58
UHM
female SAs
78
82
84
2001-2004
2002-2006
60
64
84
79
2003-2007
66
82
If we remove Football, with a GSR of 59, from the calculation, then the rest of the male studentathletes come much closer to their female peers, with a GSR of 76.
With Football removed, our overall GSR is 80 (the same as last year), which puts us above the
average for the Big West, the conference in which most of our teams except Football compete:3
Big West Conference
institution
3
2003-07 GSR
UC Davis
87
UC Santa Barbara
85
Long Beach SU
81
UC Irvine
81
Division 1 average
81
HAWAI`I – no MFB
80
Big West average
77
Cal Poly
75
Again, the scores for Cal Poly, Davis, and Division 1 include these institutions’ Football teams.
5
CSU Fullerton
68
CSU Northridge
68
UC Riverside
65
Our Football team’s GSR, on the other hand, places us almost at the bottom among the Football
teams in the Mountain West:
Mountain West Conference
Football only
institution
2003-07 GSR
US Air Force Academy
93
Boise State University
91
Colorado State University
79
Mountain West average
72
University of Nevada, Reno
71
Fresno State University
70
Division 1A average
70
San Diego State University
68
University of Wyoming
65
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
64
HAWAI`I
59
University of New Mexico
58
Again, the non-graduates who brought down the Football team’s GSR were not recruited by the
present coaching staff, and most if not all had in fact already left UHM before the current head
coach and most of his assistants were hired.
Who are the non-graduates?
Both the FGR and the GSR give only a partial picture of the students’ academic success. The
FGR makes its cut based on when the students entered: it includes only the freshmen who began
in the fall, and it leaves out anyone who entered afterwards, including all transfers. The GSR
makes its cut based on how the students left: it excludes from the calculation those who were in
good academic standing and most likely transferred to another school. We can get a more complete picture if we simply include everyone from both calculations. If we do, there were 77 UHM
scholarship student-athletes who began their full-time enrollment (here or elsewhere) in 2006-07.
One of these is not included in the calculations because he was absent for a church mission and
his six-year period of eligibility was therefore extended, but of the other 76, 51 received their degree from UHM.
The 25 non-graduates can be divided into three groups:
1. Those who used up their four years of playing time and then left without graduating.
Though we know of a couple of exceptions over the years, we can assume that these students did not go to another institution. In other words, once they were done playing, they
dropped out of school.
2. Those who had one or more years of playing time left but who were academically ineligible to compete when they left UHM. Since they were already doing badly and since
6
they would not have been able to play at any other institution, we assume that most of
these students too simply dropped out.
3. Those who had one or more years of playing time left and who were academically eligible to compete when they leave UHM. (These are the students who are simply not
counted as having attended in the GSR.) These students were able to continue their playing careers at another school, and we assume that in most cases they did.
There will be exceptions in categories (2) and (3) as well as in category (1), but it isn’t unreasonable to assume that the number of exceptions in each group might be about the same. We thus
have a rough way of estimating what percentage of our non-graduates continued their education
and what percentage did not.
Here is how the composite numbers compare to the previous four years, and how the nongraduates sort out, using the three categories I just described:
50
52
30
33
(1)
played 4 years
and left UHM
w/out a degree
8
10
7
14
(2)
playing time
remaining
but ineligible
14
16
9
9
(3)
playing time
remaining
and eligible
28
26
14
10
25
9
4
12
entering
year
Total
cohort
Percent
that
graduated
Number
of nongraduates
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
2005-06
96
113
81
84
48%
54%
51%
61%
2006-07
76
67%
These figures confirm that 2006-07 was an exceptionally good year, with more than two-thirds of
our scholarship athletes who began college that year ending up with a degree from UHM, but also
a year in which the entering class was unusually small, only 76 compared to an average of 93.5
for the four years that precede.
The number in the last column, which represents the students who left in good standing and who
still had eligibility remaining, has remained nearly level for the last three years after a sharp drop
from the two years that came before. We are doing a better job simply of keeping our studentathletes at UHM than we did earlier, which may account in part for the rise in our FGR. Those
who leave do so for various reasons: homesickness, the desire for more playing time, disagreements with the coach, the lure of a different school. There were two such departures from the
Men’s Golf team and three from Men’s Basketball in the current cohort. No other team had more
than one.
Categories (1) and (2) represent the academic casualties, and both numbers went down in the current year in greater proportion than the decrease in the size of the cohort. Six of the nine students
in category 1, who played for four years and left without a degree, were transfers to UHM (and
therefore don’t appear in the FGR). Three were in Football and two in Women’s Basketball; the
other four were in four different sports. All four of the students in category 2, who left ineligible
but with playing time remaining, entered UHM as freshmen. Two of these were in Football, two
in other sports.
7
3. The APR
What it is
The Academic Progress Rate (APR) was devised by the NCAA in order to provide a measure of
the academic performance of currently enrolled student-athletes. The two key elements in the
APR are eligibility (under academic standards established by the NCAA) and retention (remaining enrolled at the same institution). The calculation is fairly complex, but to describe it as simply as I can: Each scholarship student-athlete starts with two points for each semester in which he
or she is enrolled. Points are deducted for each student-athlete who is academically ineligible
under NCAA rules at the end of that semester and for each student-athlete with a GPA of less
than 2.6 who leaves the institution without graduating, whether by transferring or by dropping
out. Student-athletes with a 2.6 or better who are known to have transferred to another four-year
institution are removed from the retention calculation, as are student-athletes in good standing
who are known to have signed professional contracts. The student-athletes who leave and who
would have been academically ineligible if they had stayed lose both the eligibility and the retention points; they are referred to as the “Oh-for-twos” (0/2s). Bonus points are then added in for
students who lost points in previous years and who returned to the institution and graduated. Setting the bonus points aside, in order for a team to get a perfect score in any semester, every scholarship student-athlete must both remain at the same institution (the retention point) and be academically eligible under NCAA rules (the eligibility point), or he or she must be excluded as a
transfer with a 2.6 or as a pro (in which case only the eligibility point is calculated), or he or she
must graduate (in which case he or she is given both points automatically). The APR score can
be read as a percentage with the insertion of a decimal point before the final digit: a score of 948
means that the team or the institution received 94.8% of the maximum number of points that it
could have earned had all the student-athletes had met at least one of the three tests.
The NCAA calculates both a single-year APR and a multi-year APR. Calculation began in 200304, and for the first three years, the multi-year APR included only the available data. Beginning
in 2006-07, the fourth year of the program, the multi-year APR became a rolling four-year figure,
and thus beginning in 2007-08, as each new year’s data were added, an earlier year’s figures were
dropped from the calculation.
This year’s results: overall
The most recent APR figures that we have are for the 2011-12 academic year. (We have some
preliminary figures for 2012-13 that I will refer to below.) Both our single-year APR and our
four-year average declined from the scores we achieved last year.
Here are our results for the nine years that the APR has existed:
year
points lost for
eligibility
points lost for
retention
bonus
points
single-year
all-team
APR
multi-year
all-team
APR
2003-04
44
37
0
944
-
2004-05
34
75
9
929
936
2005-06
42
44
5
938
937
2006-07
33
27
6
958
941
2007-08
20
25
11
975
949
2008-09
18
17
7
979
963
8
year
points lost for
eligibility
points lost for
retention
bonus
points
single-year
all-team
APR
multi-year
all-team
APR
2009-10
21
34
4
964
969
2010-11
25
23
9
971
972
2011-12
18
29
4
969
970
Our preliminary data for 2012-13 suggests that our one-year score will go down again at least a
little, and that the four-year score will decline even more because the new one-year score will
replace the high score of 979 that we achieved in 2008-09 in the four-year calculation.
All-team scores: UHM and Division 1
Our goal, as defined by Interim Chancellor Denise Konan in 2006, is to raise our APR scores until they are in the upper 50th percentile of Division 1 schools nationwide. But this year, while
UHM’s score declined very slightly, the Division 1 average continued a slow rise:
2004-08
4-year all-team
score
2005-09
4-year all-team
score
2006-10
4-year all-team
score
2007-11
4-year all-team
score
2008-12
4-year all-team
score
Division 1
964
967
970
973
974
UHM
949
963
969
972
970
Based upon our preliminary figures, that gap will probably widen even further next year.
Team results
The team-by-team results, in order of this year’s four-year average, are as follows:
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11
2011-12
4-year
average
Women’s Swimming
1000
990
1000
989
995
Women’s Cross Country
1000
1000
1000
939
986
Women’s Track – Indoor
989
981
989
973
982
Women’s Track - Outdoor
989
981
989
973
982
Women’s Softball
975
963
1000
971
980
Women’s Soccer
978
988
989
960
978
Men’s Swimming
1000
977
957
976
977
Women’s Tennis
1000
967
1000
947
976
Men’s Baseball
980
952
969
970
968
Women’s Volleyball
1000
958
958
953
967
Women’s Water Polo
1000
926
1000
943
966
Men’s Football
975
946
945
984
962
9
Men’s Tennis
955
962
933
1000
962
Men’s Basketball
1000
980
941
900
960
Men’s Golf
909
1000
944
1000
957
Women’s Basketball
967
922
982
946
955
Women’s Golf
917
969
944
966
950
Men’s Volleyball
896
950
1000
960
949
ALL TEAMS COMBINED
6
979
964
971
971
969
970
None of our teams is currently in danger of falling below the 930 score that is the threshold for
NCAA penalties beginning next year, and the two teams that currently have the lowest scores –
Women’s Golf and Men’s Volleyball – should be in a stronger position next year as their low
team scores from 2008-09 are removed from the calculation. Other teams – notably all those that
received 1000 in 2008-09 – may well see their four-year scores drop a bit as the 2008-09 scores
are removed from the calculation.
Individual teams: UHM and Division 1
The following table compares our team four-year scores to the NCAA Division 1 team averages.
Teams are listed in order of the difference between their score and the D1 average. Nine of our
teams currently have four-year APRs that are above the D1 average for their sport and nine fall
below:
Four-year APR scores (2008-12)
team
UHM
Division 1
Women’s Swimming
995
986
Men’s Football
962
954
Men’s Basketball
960
952
Women’s Track - Indoor
982
977
difference
9
8
8
5
Women’s Track - Outdoor
Men’s Baseball
Women’s Cross Country
Women’s Softball
Men’s Swimming
Women’s Soccer
982
968
986
980
977
978
978
965
983
978
976
981
4
3
3
2
1
-3
Women’s Tennis
Men’s Tennis
Women’s Volleyball
Women’s Water Polo
Men’s Golf
Women’s Basketball
Men’s Volleyball
976
962
967
966
957
955
949
982
974
980
980
974
972
978
-6
-12
-13
-14
-17
-17
-29
Women’s Golf
950
986
-36
10
Individual teams: UHM and its conference peers
We aren’t given the all-team scores for any other institutions, and therefore the only comparison
that we can make to our conference peers is team by team. The average team scores in the Big
West Conference tend to be lower than the D1 average. Of our teams that compete in the Big
West, five are above the conference average, one matches it, and seven are below. Most of our
teams would place near the middle or bottom of the conference ranking in their sport.
UHM
Big West
average4
D1
average
no. of
teams
UHM
rank
Women’s T&F - Outdoor
982
974
978
8
T2
Men’s Basketball
960
942
952
9
T3
Men’s Golf
957
950
974
9
4
Women’s Softball
980
977
978
8
4
Men’s Baseball
968
962
965
9
T4
Women’s Cross Country
986
986
983
9
5
Women’s Water Polo
966
974
980
6
5
Women’s Tennis
976
978
982
9
T5
Men’s Tennis
962
973
974
6
6
Women’s Soccer
978
981
981
9
6
Women’s Basketball
955
968
972
9
7
Women’s Golf
950
979
986
7
8
Women’s Volleyball
967
971
980
9
8
team
Our Football team’s four-year APR is higher than the average for the teams in the Mountain West
Conference as of this year, and it ranks in third place:
Boise State University
US Air Force Academy
993
974
HAWAI`I
San Diego State University
Mountain West average
Fresno State University
962
956
953.6
950
Colorado State University
University of Nevada, Reno
University of New Mexico
University of Wyoming
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
947
942
942
938
932
What do these numbers mean?
While the APR has served a very useful purpose in drawing attention (particularly the coaches’
attention) to academic progress, it is neither the only nor the best measure of our student-athletes’
academic success. It is based upon only two criteria, eligibility to compete and retention. Eligibility is determined by NCAA standards, which are not high: a minimum of 6 completed credits
4
Not including UHM, which had not yet officially joined the Big West in 2011-12.
11
per semester; a minimum of 18 during the two regular semesters each year; progress towards a
degree measured at the rate of 20% of required credits per academic year; and a minimum GPA
of 2.0 for most of our athletes. Retention means only enrollment (not necessarily passing any
courses) in the following semester. While we should be pleased when our APR scores go up (certainly eligibility is better than ineligibility and retention is better than dropping out), we should
not take the APR as a measure of the quality of the educational experience that our studentathletes receive. For that purpose, grades and graduation rates are still the most important yardsticks.
The method of calculation also has to be taken into account when we assess the significance of
these numbers. On very small teams in particular, a single student can have an enormous impact
upon a team’s average, and in 2011-12, for instance, four teams, Women’s Cross Country, Women’s Golf, Women’s Swimming, and Women’s Volleyball, would all have had perfect APR
scores but for the points lost by a single team member. And while counting Women’s Cross
Country, Women’s Indoor Track and Field, and Women’s Outdoor Track and Field as separate
teams (though they contain the same students) helps our gender equity profile and gives us a larger number of teams with healthy APRs, it also means that a single non-performing student can
count against us three times instead of just once, as happened this year. We lost six points in our
all-team GPA because of a single student who left ineligible. If she had counted only once, our
one-year all team GPA would have been 971 instead of 969.
These same considerations apply to the scores of other schools as well, and thus they don’t impact our relative standing. They do suggest, however, that the calculated scores are less important
than the stories of the individual students that lie behind them, and it is when we take a look at
how we lost our points that we learn the most, especially when we are trying to determine how
we might improve our score.



5
A certain number of students in the 2011-12 cohort do not figure in the APR calculation. Students in good academic standing who leave to play professionally are excluded
from the retention calculation, and there were two such students in 2011-13. There
were also nine students who transferred to another four-year school and who had a GPA
of at least 2.6 on leaving; they too are excluded in calculating retention.
Thirty-five students lost points for us, either for retention or eligibility. Six of these
were “oh-for-twos” (“0/2s”)5: they lost both the retention point (they left UHM) and the
eligibility point (on leaving, they were not academically eligible under NCAA rules).
This is a lower than usual number for us: in 2009-10 we had 14 0/2s and in 2010-11 we
had 13. These students are usually the source of our greatest concern since it appears
that they simply flunked out of school, but four of these six are known to have transferred elsewhere. One did a complete withdrawal in her seventh semester, but left with
a 3.8 GPA. Her current whereabouts are unknown. Only the last is a true academic
casualty, a basketball player who was dismissed from school after failing all of his classes in his final semester.
Nine other students lost eligibility points (one counted twice). Three of these were
Football players who had already graduated but who enrolled as unclassified graduate
students in order to play for one more season. None of the three passed more than five
credits; none had a GPA higher than 1.63; and none continued enrollment in the spring.
Of the other six, four lost the eligibility point simply because they had not graduated
within five years. Three of these actually did graduate the following semester. The
fourth did a complete withdrawal in her eleventh semester and left with 117 credits and
a 2.61 GPA. (We should try to get her back to finish.) Two other students were aca-
As noted above, one counted against us three times and lost us a total of six points.
12
demically ineligible for one semester in 2011-12. Both are still in school; they have regained their eligibility; and they are currently on track to graduate.
Twenty other students lost a retention point: they chose to leave UHM before graduating. Of these, three were very close to graduating: they had an average of 117 credits
each and an average GPA of 2.73. One has returned and is presumably planning to
graduate; we need to work on the other two. The other seventeen students who left had
completed four or fewer semesters, they were all academically eligible, and they had an
average GPA of 2.89. Thirteen are known to have transferred elsewhere (mostly to junior colleges), and others may have as well. Of the 17, seven left after only a single semester, all seven are known to have transferred, and they had an average GPA of 3.16.

In sum, the individual stories tell us more about what we might need to be doing better than the
simple numbers do. The APR isn’t only concerned with academic progress in the most common
sense: keeping up with assignments, going to class, and getting good grades. We lost fourteen
points (the six 0/2s and the two students who slipped out of eligibility for one semester) because
of students who should have been doing better academically. Otherwise, for what it’s worth (and
again, the standard is not that high), we appear to be doing an adequate job of making sure that
our athletes remain academically eligible. The areas in which we might improve our score vary
in nature. Under Big West policy, it is no longer possible for athletes who have graduated to enroll as unclassified graduate students, but we still need to be concerned about the motivation of
those who stay in school after graduation just to play. We need to do a better job of helping our
athletes graduate within five years. And though the number of students who drop out close to
graduation is declining, our goal here should be none, and we need to encourage those who did
leave to come back and finish up their degrees. Finally, we lost more points in 2011-12 for retention than for eligibility, and part of the solution may lie simply in better recruiting: doing a better
job of bringing to Hawai`i student-athletes who will be happy here and who will want to stay.
4. GPAs
The metrics provided by the NCAA offer the best way of comparing our student-athletes’ academic performance to that of student-athletes at other institutions, but not as good a way of comparing our student-athletes to their peers here at UHM. For that purpose, and also for the purpose
simply of measuring the quality of education that our student-athletes receive, the best measure
may be their GPAs.
There are three quick ways in which we usually use GPA figures:



We can examine the GPAs of the student-athletes from semester to semester, in order to
see how they are progressing. When we do so, we have to remember that the cohort of
students whose grades we are looking at is constantly changing, and any differences
might be due as much to the change in the population (and thus to the coaches’ recruiting
practices) as it is to the actual academic performance of the student-athletes.
We can compare the mean semester GPAs of the student-athletes to their own mean cumulative GPAs. This is a better measure of actual academic progress, since we are looking at the grades of the same individuals. Normally, students’ GPAs improve from semester to semester as they become more experienced and as they take more courses in
their majors. Students whose mean semester GPA exceeds their cumulative GPA had a
better than average semester as measured by their own previous grades; students whose
semester GPA falls below their own cumulative GPA had a worse than average semester,
again as measured by their own previous performance.
We can compare the student-athletes’ GPAs, both cumulative and by semester, to those
of their undergraduate peers.
13
Here are the student-athletes’ average GPAs for the last six years:6
mean
semester
GPA
2.89
mean
cumulative
GPA
2.87
Spring 2008
2.88
2.88
Fall 2008
2.87
2.90
Spring 2009
2.86
2.87
Fall 2009
2.88
2.87
Spring 2010
2.78
2.85
Fall 2010
2.86
2.86
Spring 2011
2.92
2.89
Fall 2011
2.95
2.93
Spring 2012
2.92
2.95
Fall 2012
3.06
3.01
Spring 2013
3.02
3.03
semester
Fall 2007
In 2012-13, the student-athletes’ mean semester GPAs continued the general upward trend that
we have observed over the last several semesters. In the Fall of 2012 they attained a mean of
3.06, the highest that we have ever observed during the period for which we have comparable
records. In the Spring of 2012 they fell back slightly, to 3.02, but that was still higher than any
other previous semester in our records.
In the Fall of 2012, the student-athletes’ mean semester GPA (3.06) exceeded their mean cumulative GPA (3.01), indicating that this was an above average semester for them. In the Spring, on
the other hand, their semester GPA (3.02) was lower than their cumulative GPA (3.03), indicating
a slightly below average semester.
If we compare the student-athletes’ grades to those of their undergraduate peers, we find that in
2012-13, for the very first time during the period that we have been keeping these records, both
male and female student-athletes had both semester and cumulative GPAs that exceeded the undergraduate averages.
Here is a more detailed breakdown of the GPA data for both the student-athletes and the undergraduates:7
6
2012-13 GPA figures based upon grade lists for each team that were drawn up after the deadline for
changing Incomplete grades for each semester. Averages, here and in the team results listed below, are
calculated by weighing each student-athlete the same, regardless of the number of credits completed. I am
grateful to Brandy Kawasaki, Student-Athlete Academic Services Administrative and Fiscal Assistant, for
providing this data.
7
In this and the following two tables, the co-ed Sailing team is included in the figures for all SAs but not in
the figures for male or female SAs. Undergraduate figures were provided by the Manoa Office of Institutional Research. I am very grateful to Yang Zhang, OIR Director, for providing this data. As with the student-athletes, averages are calculated by weighing each student equally.
14
mean
sem
GPA
Fall 2012
% 3.0 mean
or
cum
higher GPA
mean
sem
GPA
Spring 2013
% 3.0 mean
or
cum
higher GPA
% 3.0
or
higher
% 3.0
or
higher
All
undergrads
2.96
61.8%
2.95
53.2%
2.97
61.9%
2.94
53.7%
All SAs
3.06
59.6%
3.01
50.3%
3.02
61.3%
3.03
55.1%
Male
undergrads
2.85
56.6%
2.86
46.5%
2.83
56.5%
2.88
468%
Male SAs
2.93
52.0%
2.90
37.9%
2.88
53.6%
2.91
41.4%
Female
undergrads
3.04
66.2%
3.03
58.9%
3.03
66.6%
3.05
59.7%
Female SAs
3.23
69.6%
3.16
65.0%
3.20
71.8%
3.18
70.8%
There is a great deal to be pleased about here, and there are many who can share in the credit,
including the Athletics Department administration, which conducts regular workshops with the
coaches on ways of improving academic success, and the hard-working staff in Student-Athlete
Academic Services. The greatest amount of credit, however, belongs to the student-athletes
themselves. The most telling numbers are contained in the chart on the previous page, which
shows a steady rise in the student-athletes’ cumulative GPA, even in the semesters when their
semester GPA was lower. If there were no change in the composition of the cohort – if this were
the same group of students during that entire six years – this would be mathematically impossible: the semester GPA would have to be higher than the cumulative GPA for the cumulative GPA
to rise. But the cohort does change: students graduate, and new students come in. And the constant rise in the cumulative GPA indicates that the quality of these students has improved: they
are better prepared for college, and even when their grades are below their own average, their
grades are higher than those of the group of students that preceded them. Changes in NCAA eligibility standards are partly responsible: we are not the only school at which both new freshmen
and in-coming transfers are better prepared for work at the college level. Our own coaches’ recruiting practices have also changed. We now have, for instance, far fewer student-athletes who
came to us from junior colleges who were academic Non-Qualifiers under NCAA rules when
they graduated from high school than we had in the past. This group alone used to account for
our largest number of 0/2s in the APR and for a significant portion of our non-graduates. NCAA
eligibility rules are going to tighten up even further in the next three years, and presuming that
our coaches continue to recruit with academic success in mind, the rise in the student-athletes’
GPAs gives us reason to expect that both our APR and our graduation rates should also go up
sometime in the future.
As always, of course, there was considerable variation in the GPAs in 2011-12 from team to
team, as the following tables show. Boldface indicates a team whose semester GPA was equal to
or higher than their cumulative GPA – in other words, whose grades improved last semester rather than fell.
The tables are arranged in descending order of the “semester pass rate,” which is the percentage
of credits for which the students on each team received a grade other than F or NC. We have observed in the past that one of the principal reasons for certain teams’ low GPAs is simply the
number of classes that the students have failed. These tables confirm that there is a correlation,
though not a perfect one, between the pass rate and the overall GPA and between the pass rate
and the team’s ability to raise their mean semester GPA over their own mean cumulative GPA. If
there is one thing that we could do to increase both the mean GPAs and the speed with which student-athletes proceed to graduation, it would be to reduce the number of Fs or NCs even further.
15
Fall 2012
Women’s Swimming and Diving
Women’s Golf
Men’s Baseball
Women’s Soccer
Women’s Volleyball
Women’s Softball
Women’s Water Polo
Men’s Golf
Sailing
Women’s Cross Country/Track
Men’s Volleyball
Men’s Tennis
Women’s Basketball
Men’s Basketball
Men’s Swimming and Diving
Men’s Football
Women’s Tennis
33
6
37
31
28
25
25
12
29
47
23
9
16
16
32
119
9
semester
pass rate
100%
100%
100%
99.25%
99.19%
99.13%
99.10%
98.01%
97.80%
97.69%
97.51%
97.47%
97.27%
96.84%
96.32%
96.18%
90.70%
ALL STUDENT-ATHLETES
497
97.77%
sport
sport
Women’s Swimming and Diving
Women’s Softball
Women’s Golf
Women’s Soccer
Women’s Tennis
Women’s Water Polo
Women’s Basketball
Men’s Swimming and Diving
Sailing
Men’s Football
Men’s Baseball
Women’s Cross Country/Track
Women’s Volleyball
Men’s Tennis
Men’s Golf
Men’s Volleyball
Men’s Basketball
ALL STUDENT-ATHLETES
size
Spring 2013
semester
size
pass rate
34
100%
21
100%
5
100%
25
100%
9
98.92%
24
98.48%
14
98.38%
29
98.22%
26
97.22%
103
97.08%
33
96.65%
44
96.48%
26
95.78%
10
95.68%
11
93.43%
20
92.45%
16
90.26%
450
97.09%
mean
sem. GPA
3.33
3.22
3.17
3.26
3.31
3.18
3.21
3.06
2.82
3.17
3.07
3.27
3.05
2.86
2.93
2.81
3.20
mean
cum. GPA
3.28
3.19
3.11
3.05
3.30
3.14
3.02
2.73
2.76
3.13
3.01
3.35
3.21
2.96
2.96
2.77
3.17
3.06
3.01
mean
sem. GPA
3.38
3.28
3.26
3.12
3.13
3.25
3.20
3.14
2.87
2.88
2.94
3.18
2.98
3.35
2.70
2.56
2.54
mean
cum. GPA
3.31
3.15
3.29
3.06
3.18
3.06
3.25
2.99
2.85
2.85
3.08
3.19
3.17
3.36
2.77
2.83
2.82
3.02
3.03