On October 13, 2016, the NCAA announced that it opened an overarching review on its academic standards for Division I student-athletes. The target of this investigation is to maintain academic quality for these student-athletes, and the committee has already approved a new transfer policy in its effort to accomplish this goal that retroactively applies to the 2012-2013 academic year.
Under the old policy, when a student-athlete would transfer to another school, the transfer sometimes harmed the original school’s academic progress rate, or APR, which is a metric used to measure a university sports program’s academic performance. According to this new policy, the student-athlete can transfer from one four-year school to another prior to finishing a full academic year without harming the school’s APR. Additionally, an APR point may be forgiven if the student-athlete transferred to a two-year institution with a 3.3 GPA or better.
This review comes as a result of several academic fraud scandals and lawsuits that have questioned the quality of education that student-athletes are receiving. In its announcement, the NCAA stated that “[d]ata show that transferring has a negative impact on the student’s likelihood of graduation.” As a result, the NCAA said that the committee “will continue to look at the academic impact of transferring and will seek to identify ways to keep students on track academically.”