ERIC Number: EJ1262575
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020-Sep
Pages: 14
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0361-0365
EISSN: N/A
The NCAA's Graduation Success Rate: How Successful Is It?
Research in Higher Education, v61 n6 p780-793 Sep 2020
The Graduation Success Rate (GSR) plays a critical role supporting the NCAA's Collegiate Model of amateur college athletics. The NCAA created the GSR to correct a statistical bias in the legally mandated Federal Graduation Rate (FGR) that causes it to underestimate rates. But the GSR's attempted correction causes it to overestimate rates. This paper reports the first estimate of the size of this statistical bias. The focus is on the big revenue sport of men's basketball in the so-called Power Conferences. The small size of basketball squads allows a reasonably accurate estimate of GSR cohort sizes based on publically available data. This in turn enables the calculation of a "corrected" GSR. The results indicate that the GSR exaggeration is large, perhaps as much as 20 percentage points. This raises fundamental questions about the success of the GSR as a useful graduation rate metric.
Descriptors: College Students, College Athletics, Athletes, Graduation Rate, Statistical Bias, Males, Team Sports
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A