Dec. 20, 2005
EVANSTON, Ill. -- Since the selection of the 56 schools for this year's slate of bowl games, there have been a pair of reports released on the academic performance and graduation success rate for NCAA Division I-A schools.
For Northwestern, the reports continue to affirm that the Wildcats lead, or are ranked among the leaders, in academic performance nationally.
In an annual report released by Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, Northwestern led all bowl teams with its 83 percent federal graduation rate for football student-athletes, including a 90 percent graduation rate for its African-American football student-athletes.
This was the first year that Lapchick used the NCAA's new Academic Progress Rate (APR) to measure the teams' performance. Northwestern led all bowl football programs with an APR of 971 (out of 1,000).
"If there were a national championship for graduation rates among bowl teams, Northwestern and Boston College would have played for the National Championship," said Lapchick.
This week, the NCAA announced its new graduation success rate for the entering classes of 1995-96 through 1998-99. The new rate is meant to portray a more accurate picture of a program's academic performance by giving credit to incoming transfers that graduate while not penalizing the institution for outgoing transfers that are academically eligible upon departure.
Northwestern's new football GSR is 92 percent, which ranks fourth among all bowl teams.
"We continue to graduate our student-athletes at a high rate, something that Northwestern has always done well," said Mark Murphy, Northwestern's director of athletics. "We take pride in fielding one of the nation's top football teams at one of the country's top institutions, and graduating our players."
For three of the past four years, Northwestern has received the American Football Coaches Association's (AFCA) Academic Achievement Award.