Initiatives will help keep athletes focused on graduation

Ohio State requirements tougher than NCAA’s

COLUMBUS – Student athlete graduation rates at The Ohio State University have increased substantially since last year, and several new initiatives designed to assist athletes in their academic pursuits suggest Ohio State’s graduation rates will show an upward trend in coming years, as well.

            At the same time, officials tending to athletes’ academic needs are noting that graduation statistics are just numbers. What’s more important in driving new programs and processes related to academics, they say, is ensuring that athletes enjoy the best experience possible while attending Ohio State.

            “Our concern is with education,” said David O. Frantz, professor of English and faculty liaison between Student Athlete Support Services and the Office of Academic Affairs, speaking to the Board of Trustees Friday (10/5). “Our job is to take these students, many of whom define themselves as athletes, and help them find what engages them academically. We need to pay attention to each individual student.”

             Frantz’s appointment as a liaison a year ago was just one of several steps related to an overall emphasis on ensuring that athletes remain in good academic standing during their college career. The academic support has been enhanced so that even if athletes leave school for professional sports or transfer to another institution to obtain more playing time – the most common reasons that athletes leave Ohio State – they will be best situated to continue their studies and earn a degree.

Other initiatives include producing weekly academic status reports on all student athletes; enhancing study-table, tutoring and mentoring services in Younkin Success Center; establishing a closer relationship between athletes and academic advisers within their colleges; having Student Athlete Support Services – a unit led by Director Kate Riffee that includes a staff focused on both academics and life skills – report jointly to Athletic Director Andy Geiger and Frantz; and appointing an academic resource coordinator in Student Athlete Support Services who oversees and develops closer collaboration with writing and math centers and other academic services across campus.

In addition, Frantz participated with athletics officials in prescreening all prospective student athletes’ high school transcripts before any athletic scholarships were offered to those entering Ohio State this autumn. Such attention to academic performance will result in taking “many fewer long shots” in recruiting student athletes whose admission and/or eligibility might be threatened by academic problems, Frantz said.

     The changes speak to an increasing emphasis on academic performance among students in all sectors of athletics, Geiger told trustees. Coaches – including those from the highest-visibility sports – are part of an invigorated support system designed to create an environment that fosters student athletes’ academic progress, he said.

            “We think the variety of things happening will sustain this movement in the right direction for our student athletes,” said Martha Garland, vice provost and dean for undergraduate studies, to whom Frantz reports. “These initiatives, combined with Ohio State’s eligibility standards – which are tougher than the NCAA’s – ensure that if student athletes leave school early, they leave under conditions in which they’ve made genuine academic progress and are in good standing should they later decide to complete their degrees. And if they do leave, we encourage them to remain focused on earning those degrees whenever the time is right for them.”

            Ohio State’s Colleges of the Arts and Sciences and Undergraduate Student Academic Services require that student athletes within those units take at least 35 credit hours each year that cover the General Education Curriculum, major or major prerequisite requirements. The National Collegiate Athletic Association guidelines for eligibility require only that scholarship athletes enroll full-time (12 hours) in courses that count toward graduation – including electives – but impose no restrictions on whether those hours demonstrate real progress toward a degree.

            Garland also acknowledged that with an athletic program as strong nationally as Ohio State’s, the graduation rates are likely to consistently reflect that for some athletes, life decisions about their careers are bound to interfere with progress toward a degree. “Athletic decisions these students make are very significant because our athletes are so good,” she said. “It’s nice when they graduate within six years, but it’s nicer if they get their degree when they’re ready and they live satisfying, productive lives.”

            Ohio State’s six-year graduation rate for athletes entering school in 1994 reached 62 percent, compared to 50 percent for those who entered one year earlier. The six-year graduation rate for all Ohio State students entering in 1994 decreased slightly, shifting from 56 percent to 55 percent. The numbers of minority student athletes who graduated in six years showed marked improvement, increasing from 13 percent for male athletes entering in 1993 to 45 percent for those entering in 1994, and from 50 percent of female athletes entering in 1993 to 78 percent for those who joined Ohio State in 1994.           The national average Division I student-athlete graduation rate is 58 percent, according to the NCAA.

            The most recent rates indicate Ohio State’s overall student body and athlete graduation rates are comparable to a number of Big Ten and benchmark institutions, those aspirational peers against which the University compares itself in a number of performance measures.

Garland and Frantz suggest that based on Ohio State’s admission standards, it would make sense for the University’s graduation rates to be listed among the top half of the Big Ten. And the retention figures Ohio State has posted leave officials hopeful for future graduation rates, Garland said. The retention of freshmen who returned for their sophomore year in 1994 stood at 77 percent. Since then, retention has showed steady increases, reaching at least 85 percent for last year’s freshmen.

     “Students can’t graduate if they’re not retained,” Garland said. “We’ve been on an upward trajectory in retention since 1994, and we weren’t before that. We expect that for the classes that entered after 1994, we’ll see a climb in the overall student graduation rate, and athletes’ rates should move up right along with them.”

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