The following is a glossary of definitions related to the common terms used in the NCAA's academic reform efforts.
Academic Progress Rate (APR). The APR is the fulcrum upon which the entire academic-reform structure rests. Developed as a more real-time assessment of teams' academic performance than the six-year graduation-rate calculation provides, the APR awards two points each term to student-athletes who meet academic-eligibility standards and who remain with the institution. A team's APR is the total points earned by the team at a given time divided by the total points possible.
925. This is the cut score the Division I Board of Directors approved for immediate or contemporaneous penalties. APR scores have already become meaningful numbers to the membership and general public. Based on current data, an APR score of 925 (out of 1,000) translates to an approximate 60 percent Graduation Success Rate.
900. This is the cut score for historical penalties. This benchmark of 900 APR translates to an approximate 45 percent Graduation Success Rate.
Squad-size adjustment. Small sample sizes of some teams can lead to reduced confidence in the APR as an estimate of academic performance for those teams. That is particularly true with only one or two years of data. Confidence intervals, commonly used in statistics, roughly represent a range of scores within which the true APR likely resides. That means the "upper confidence boundary" of a team's APR would have to be below 925 for that team to be subject to APR penalties. The squad-size adjustment is a short-term tool, however, and will be eliminated with the 2007-08 reports.
Quarter school variance. Schools that are on a quarter system instead of a semester system were found to have an unintended advantage in APR calculations simply because of the number of reporting occasions and not because of academic performance. Because the reporting of APR is done at two occasions for semester schools but at three occasions for quarter schools, a slight numerical advantage can accrue from the extra reporting occasion. To account for the disparity, a statistical formula will be applied to slightly alter quarter school APRs.
0-for-2. This term is the equivalent of a four-letter-word when it comes to reform. An "0-for-2" student-athlete is one who is neither academically eligible nor remains with the institution. An 0-for-2 player might be one who transfers, leaves the institution for personal reasons or leaves to turn pro and would not have been academically eligible had he or she returned. Obviously, these are the types of situations the academic-reform structure is most meant to address since they are the most damaging to a team's APR. While teams cannot always control the reasons student-athletes leave, the contemporaneous penalty holds them accountable for at least making sure student-athletes are academically eligible during their college tenures.
Immediate penalties. Known also as contemporaneous penalties, these are the most immediate penalties in the academic-reform structure. They occur when a team under an APR score of 925 loses a student-athlete who would not have been academically eligible had he or she returned (an "0-for-2" player). An immediate penalty means that the team cannot re-award that grant-in-aid to another player. In effect, a team's financial aid limit is reduced by the amount of countable aid awarded to the student-athlete who did not earn eligibility and was not retained. This penalty is not automatically applied when teams fall below the APR cut point; it is applied only when teams below that line do not retain an academically ineligible player.
There are exceptions available. The exceptions are applicable to:
A student-athlete who has exhausted eligibility in the sport in which the aid was awarded.
A student-athlete who does not use all of his or her seasons of competition but exhausts his or her five-year clock.
A partial or nonqualifer who fails to earn a fourth season of competition by graduating prior to the start of his or her fifth year, and therefore has exhausted eligibility.
A fall sport student-athlete who concludes his or her competitive eligibility at the end of the fall term and does not return to the institution subsequent to the fall term.
A student-athlete who concludes his or her competitive eligibility at the end of four years.
10 percent cap. To ensure that the immediate penalties are rehabilitative in nature and not overly punitive, the Board of Directors approved a limit on the number of contemporaneous penalties that apply to a team in a given year to about 10 percent of the team's financial aid limit. That includes rounding up to the next whole number for headcount sports. For example, in the headcount sport of Division I men's basketball, a team with an APR below 925 would be subject to a penalty of up to 10 percent of the maximum 13 scholarships, rounded up to the next whole number (in this case, a maximum penalty of two scholarships).
Historical penalties. While immediate penalties are designed to be rehabilitative in nature, the historically based penalties carry more significant sanctions for teams that the APR identifies as chronic under-performers. The penalties will be incremental in nature, beginning with a warning once teams fall below a 900 APR cut score, and progressing to practice and financial aid restrictions, postseason bans and restricted membership status upon subsequent occasions. Teams scoring below 900 are subject to further examination to determine if historical penalties are warranted. Specifically, teams are compared against the bottom 18 percent within their sport, general student body academic performance, and performance expectation given the resources of the institution.
Graduation Success Rate (GSR). The GSR is an alternative graduation-rate methodology the NCAA launched this academic year. The new rate, which supplements rather than replaces the federal methodology, credits institutions for transfers -- both incoming and outgoing -- as long as they are academically eligible. The new rate also accounts for midyear enrollees and is calculated for every sport.