Academic Progress Rates

A few years ago, the NCAA decided to take the academic progress of their athletes a little more seriously and threw out their highly flawed graduation rates in favor of the Academic Progress Rate(APR). The APR measures if a player is on pace to graduate while he is at the school. So if a player leaves school after his sophomore season, but is where a sophomore should be academically, it doesn't hurt the program.

The scores are on a scale up to 1000, with 925 being the absolute minimum acceptable score. Teams that score below that could face penalties such as a loss of scholarships. This year, the NCAA also cited a "squad size adjustment" meaning there were a number of programs that fell below the 925 cut-off, but due to insufficient data, they won't be penalized. Those programs get a few years to correct their APR numbers before they receive punishment.

Here's the APR numbers for the WCHA:
Colorado College 994
Wisconsin 975
Minnesota 974
Denver 970
Minnesota State Mankato 962
St. Cloud State 938
Minnesota-Duluth 931
North Dakota 918(squad size adjustment)
Alaska-Anchorage 914(squad size adjustment)

And the CCHA:

Notre Dame- 1,000
Northern Michigan-989
Bowling Green- 987
Miami- 982
Michigan- 982
Ferris State- 972
Western Michigan- 972
Ohio State- 971
Michigan State- 969
Lake Superior- 961
Alaska-Fairbanks- 955
Nebraska-Omaha- 949

Those are pretty decent numbers across the board for the schools out west. St. Cloud was below the 925 mark last season, but improved their score for this year, so they will avoid penalties. North Dakota and Alaska-Anchorage obviously have to improve quickly or they face sanction from the NCAA.