NCAA

Twenty-six Division II member schools will be honored as part of the Presidents’ Award for Academic Excellence program for achieving four-year Academic Success Rates of 90 percent or higher. This is the sixth year of the program.

Point Loma Nazarene University increased by 1 percentage point from 2015 and led Division II with an Academic Success Rate of 99 percent, followed by Bentley University, Saint Michael’s College and Hillsdale College. All three achieved a 98 percent ASR.

For the third straight year, the Northeast-10 Conference led Division II’s 24 conferences in ASR rates, with four athletics programs posting scores of 90 percent or more. The Sunshine State Conference and the Great Lakes Valley Conference had three apiece.

“Division II’s philosophy is built on a commitment to supporting the whole student, including academic success as a primary emphasis,” said Steve Scott, president of Pittsburg State University and chair of the Division II Presidents Council. “The number of schools that consistently hit the 90 percent mark illustrates how Division II members continually uphold that commitment.”

The Academic Success Rate is the percentage of student-athletes who graduate within six years of initial collegiate enrollment and includes virtually all Division II student-athletes, including transfers and those not receiving athletic scholarships.

The Division II ASR also captures about 51 percent more student-athletes than the federal graduation rate. Unlike the federal rate, the ASR counts nonscholarship student-athletes and those who transfer to a school after initial enrollment elsewhere, while removing student-athletes who leave school while academically eligible. The national ASR is 71 percent for Division II student-athletes who entered college from 2006 through 2009.

Division II student-athletes continue to graduate at a higher rate than the general student body. The federal rate for the 2009 entering class of student-athletes was 56 percent, compared with 49 percent for the general student body.