Sunday, January 16, 2005
Increased Academic Standards
The Orlando Sentinel has this article (free registration required) about the new NCAA legislation that gives it the power to take scholarships away from Division 1 teams that do not remain academically eligible. One other bit of legislation that the NCAA passed was the 40-60-80 rule. Under this rule, athletes must have earned 40% of their credits towards graduation by the end of their second year, 60% by the end of their third year, and 80% at the end of their fourth year (up from 25%, 50%, and 75%). Incentives matter and when incentives change, decisions change too:
With the 40-60-80 rule, Mooney said he has heard anecdotal evidence that more junior-college recruits increasingly are looking to transfer to Division II schools instead of Division I schools, because the continuing-eligibility standards will not be as stringent in Division II.The marginal athletes (in the economic meaning of the term) are now looking more closely at their next-best alternatives. I've heard that some D1 schools were caught off-guard by the high cut-off rate (no more than 10% of scholarships can be lost in any one program - many schools apparently thought it would be less than 10%). D2 schools are also going to feel the effects... and they had no vote in the matter.
