Hawkeyes Compare Nicely Academically With Bowl Peers

Dec. 14, 2010

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IOWA CITY, Iowa – The University of Iowa ranks 12th in Graduation Success Rate (GSR) among the 70 college football teams that will be participating in bowl games in the coming weeks. The UI also ranks third among the eight Big Ten Conference teams that will be participating in post-season events.

Iowa, which will play Missouri in the 2010 Insight Bowl on Dec. 28 in Tempe, Ariz., scored 79 on the 2010 GSR report released by the NCAA in October. That number was 12 points higher than the national average and an all-time high for the UI football program.

Notre Dame, with a GSR of 96, tops the list of bowl-bound teams. The top five also includes Northwestern (95), the U.S. Naval Academy (92), Boston College (90), and the U.S. Air Force Academy (86) and Stanford (86).

Penn State (84) was the only other Big Ten institution to rank ahead of the UI.

The NCAA established the GSR in 2004 and issued its first report in the fall of 2005. The GSR is different from the graduation rate calculated by the U.S. Department of Education. Both provide students a six-year window to graduate. However, the NCAA does not penalize institutions when student-athletes transfer to other colleges, as long as they depart in good academic standing.

In addition, the NCAA’s GSR calculation subtracts students who are considered allowable exclusions (those who either die or become permanently disabled, those who leave the school to join the armed forces, foreign services or attend a church mission), as well as those who would have been academically eligible to compete had they returned to the institution.

IOWA FOOTBALL AND THE
NCAA’S GRADUATION SUCCESS RATE

• 2010 Report: 79
• 2009 Report: 74
• 2008 Report: 75
• 2007 Report: 73
• 2006 Report: 65
• 2005 Report: 58

Click HERE to learn more about Iowa’s successes academically.