By BJ LEWIS

Staff Writer

The NCAA is in the midst of implementing an updated system that will attempt to improve the academic standing of student-athletes.

This new academic scale, the Academic Progress Rate, will force teams to be more accountable for the success and failure of their student-athletes and lead to increased graduation rates.

Under the APR, a scholarship player earns points each semester for eligibility and retention.

Students change their majors often to find what they truly want to study, but athletes do not have this luxury. If a student-athlete changes majors, they may not be eligible with their new major under this rule.

Track and Field coach Shawn Jackson agrees with the system in principal but has issues with it in practice. "I know what the intent is, but there's another way to do it," Jackson said. "We're forcing the kids into a box. I don't feel like I have to tell my athletes they can't change their major because [eligibility] could take a hit."

A confidence boundary allows for comparison between teams with larger squads than others. This boundary functions to help out teams with smaller numbers that do not have enough data to provide an accurate APR.

"The system is certainly imperfect," Athletic Director Jim Oakes said. "The loss of a scholarship for a tennis team may be more extreme than a loss to the football team. But it is nearly impossible to come up with a foolproof method to determine academic standing."

As the years go on and more APR data is gathered, the NCAA will keep a record of a team's four most recent years.

When penalties come into effect they can potentially affect the number of scholarships a program can hand out. One year a team may hand out 25 athletic scholarships but a penalty may cause them to only be able to have 23.

The APR is score-based and does not take into account some circumstances with some players that do occur. A student could attend Tech for a quarter, not like Ruston and want to transfer.

That team would then take a negative hit to its retention and lose a point. If a student leaves to move on to the professional level, retention takes a hit.

Kevin Spence, a sophomore basic engineering major, is not a fan of the system's rule.

"If it's one player, it shouldn't have a negative impact [on the athletic program]," Spence said.

Oakes said he is confident that students will rise to meet the standard once that standard is known and no scholarshop losses will occur.

Oakes said, "We just have to look back three or four years down the line to see if it was fair."