The University of Toledo received a Graduation Success Rate (GSR) of 92% for its athletic department in the latest figures released by the NCAA. This is the fourth consecutive year that the Rockets achieved a GSR of 92%, a figure that ranks third among the 12 schools in the Mid-American Conference.
Five Rocket teams scored a perfect 100 GSR: men’s basketball, women’s basketball, women’s golf, women’s tennis and women’s volleyball. Football recorded a 93 GSR, the highest total in school history and tied with Ohio for No. 1 in the MAC.
In addition, Toledo’s Federal Graduation Rate for student-athletes was 71%, eight points higher than the national average of 63% for all students at U.S. public universities in the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics.
The Federal Graduation Rate counts as graduates those first-year, full-time student-athletes who entered a school on athletics aid and graduated from that institution within six years. The NCAA GSR differs from the federal calculation in two important ways:
The GSR holds colleges accountable for those student-athletes who transfer to their school, and the GSR does not penalize colleges whose student-athletes leave the institution in good academic standing.
“The latest GSR figures are a clear indicator that our student-athletes are graduating at a very high rate, which is something we take great pride in,” said University of Toledo Vice President and Athletic Director Bryan B. Blair. “There is nothing more gratifying than seeing our student-athletes earn their degrees, and in many cases that includes receiving a master’s degree. We are proud of the academic achievements of our student-athletes and look forward to their continued success in the classroom in the future.”
GSR is a gauge of every team’s graduation rate within a six-year period of a student-athlete’s enrollment. The latest GSR figures examined the student-athlete cohort that originally enrolled in 2015 and would need to have graduated by August 2021 to count as a graduate.
The GSR formula, intended to be a more complete and accurate look at student-athlete success, removes from the rate student-athletes who leave school while academically eligible and includes student-athletes who transfer to a school after initially enrolling elsewhere. The GSR also allows for a deeper understanding of graduation success in individual sports than the federal metric, which has broader groupings.
