The Presidents' Award for Academic Excellence is awarded to Division II schools that have achieved a four-cohort (2012-15) Academic Success Rate of 90% or higher. This year, 44 member schools earned this honor. The NCAA and the federal government measure time to graduate within a six-year window of first-time enrollment. Thus, the graduation rates for the 2012-2015 cohorts would have been reported from 2019 to 2022.
Bentley, Biola and Saint Michael's were the top performers, earning an ASR of 99%. Hillsdale (98%), Thomas Jefferson University (97%) and Trevecca Nazarene (97%) rounded out the top six.
The Northeast-10 Conference led the division with seven athletics programs achieving scores of 90% or more, followed by the Central Atlantic Collegiate and Great Lakes Valley conferences, with five programs each.
"I am excited to honor and recognize the 44 schools for this prestigious award," said Steven Shirley, president of Minot State and chair of the Division II Presidents Council. "It is a testament to their hard work, commitment and dedication to achieving academic excellence."
The Division II ASR includes transfers into a school in the calculation and removes those who transferred out while academically eligible. The ASR also includes the more than 30,000 nonscholarship student-athletes who were enrolled in the four years covered in the most recent data.
Even when using the less-inclusive federal graduation rate, student-athletes are outperforming their peers in the general student population by 8 percentage points. For Division II student-athletes, the federal rate is 60%, while the general student body federal rate is 52%.
This is the 12th year the award has been given. Eight schools have earned the award every year: Assumption, Bentley, Eckerd, Hillsdale, Rockhurst, Rollins, Saint Michael's and Seattle Pacific.
The schools receiving the 2022 Presidents' Award for Academic Excellence are:
