The NCAA’s Graduation Rate Game: How Data is Manipulated and What Can Be Done
When the NCAA boasts about how well student-athletes are doing academically, they often point to glowing graduation statistics. However, when you scratch beneath the surface, the numbers tell a different and more troubling story. One the NCAA is adept at spinning. According to a detailed position paper from The Drake Group, a non-profit organization focused on academic integrity in college sports, the NCAA’s academic metrics are not just misleading, but rather designed to protect the organization’s public image instead of telling the truth.
The Numbers Game: GSR vs. Federal Graduation Rate
The NCAA’s preferred measurement tool is the Graduation Success Rate (GSR), not the Federal Graduation Rate (FGR) used for the general student population. Why? Because the GSR is more forgiving and, crucially, excludes data that would hurt the NCAA’s image.
For instance, the GSR:
Removes athletes who leave a school in good academic standing from the calculation, even if they never graduate anywhere.
Includes transfer students and athletes who join midstream (which the FGR does not), but doesn’t track whether they actually graduate later.
Counts athletes as “graduates” if they transfer and graduate anywhere else, without holding their original school accountable.
This results in inflated success rates. As the Drake Group points out, the FGR often shows graduation rates 20-35 percentage points lower than the NCAA’s GSR for revenue sports like football and men’s basketball .
What’s Missing? Transparency and Accountability
The Drake Group argues that the current GSR methodology undermines transparency. Schools are not held responsible for the academic outcomes of the athletes they recruit, and they can lose track of them entirely if they transfer, drop out, or otherwise vanish from the data.
Furthermore, the NCAA does not publicly disaggregate graduation and academic data by race, gender, sport, or revenue status in a way that is easily accessible and meaningful for comparison.
The Consequences of Cooked Books
This data manipulation isn’t harmless. It helps protect multimillion-dollar coaching contracts and university reputations, while failing the athletes the NCAA claims to prioritize. Many of those left behind are from underrepresented racial and socioeconomic backgrounds - exactly the students higher education should be doing more to support.
The Drake Group warns that the NCAA’s current metrics mask academic underperformance and allow athletic departments to maintain eligibility-focused programs that do not necessarily help athletes graduate with meaningful degrees.
What Needs to Change?
To restore credibility and better serve student-athletes, the Drake Group recommends:
Eliminate the GSR and require the NCAA to adopt the Federal Graduation Rate (FGR) as the primary academic metric.
Track individual academic outcomes, including:
Time to graduation.
Major and degree type.
Credits earned toward degree.
Cumulative GPA upon exit.
Disaggregate academic data by race, gender, sport, revenue/non-revenue classification, and initial athletic scholarship status.
Report graduation data for all students, including walk-ons and those who transfer or drop out.
Make all data publicly available in an easily searchable and comparable format.
The Bottom Line
The NCAA continues to shape its public narrative using handpicked data that flatters its mission while concealing academic shortcomings. By adopting meaningful reforms like those proposed by The Drake Group, the NCAA could take a major step toward genuine accountability and truly living up to its claim of putting “student-athletes” first.
Until then, the numbers we’re fed are more about protecting the brand than measuring success.
That’s not just bad math, it’s bad policy.
