TOWSON, Md. ? According to the Division I Academic Progress Report released by the NCAA on Wednesday, every one of Towson University?s 20 intercollegiate athletic programs received a score that is significantly above the NCAA?s ?cut score.?
In fact, every program has at least a 955 multi-year APR score ? well above the ?cut score? of 925.
Four Tiger programs have multiple-year APR scores in the top 20 per cent nationally, including football (964), women?s outdoor track (989), women?s indoor track (986) and women?s cross country (992).
In addition, six other Tiger programs ranked among the top 30 per cent nationally. The Tiger women?s tennis team has a 990 APR score while the women?s soccer (986), men?s soccer (978), men?s golf (988), men?s basketball (964) and baseball (968) teams also earned impressive scores.
?The fact that all 20 of our programs are significantly above the cut score is a credit to our student-athletes, first and foremost,? said Mike Hermann, the Director of Athletics at Towson University. ?Secondly, it is a credit to the cooperation our students receive when working with the faculty on the difficult task of balancing academic and athletic responsibilities. In addition, our coaches deserve credit for establishing a culture for academic achievement. Our strong academic services staff has provided outstanding support for student-athletes in need. It is truly a team effort.?
Established in 2005, the APR is a metric that is used to measure the success or failure of collegiate athletic programs in moving student-athletes toward graduation. Collegiate sports teams that fail to achieve an APR score of 925 (equivalent to a 60% graduation rate) may be penalized with the loss of scholarships. A perfect APR score is 1,000.
The APR is calculated by allocating points for eligibility and retention — the two factors that are identified as the best indicators of graduation. Each player on a given roster earns a maximum of two points per term, one for being academically eligible and one for staying with the institution. A team’s APR is the total points of a team’s roster at a given time divided by the total points possible. Since the result is a decimal number, the Committee on Academic Performance (CAP) decided to multiply it by 1,000 for ease of reference. Thus, a raw APR score of .925 translates into the 925 that will become the standard terminology.
