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Thursday, September 28, 2006
Bison ranked No. 1
As part of a story on NCAA graduation rates, USA Today reshuffled last season's final Top 25 to rank the teams by graduation rate.No surprise, Bucknell ranked No. 1 with its 100 percent grad rate. A slight surprise is that the Bison share the top spot with Florida, which also had a 100 percent grad rate.

The story didn't break graduation rates down by conference, but it would be a big surprise if any conference ranked higher than the Patriot League. The league's eight schools average grad rate was around 87.5 percent (We say around because lacking raw numbers, the best we could do was average the school's percentages. Obviously if the schools that graduated 100 percent graduated more or less athletes than the ones who had lower percentages, the actual league graduation rate would be slightly higher or lower). That is almost 30 points higher than the national average of 59 percent. And that number skews low because of American's woeful 18 percent grad rate during the years (1996-1999) in the latest study. Take AU out of the mix, and the seven schools actually in the league in the reporting period had a 97.4 percent graduation rate. AU's performance is expected to improve now that it is complying with the Patriot League's academic standards.

Here's a breakdown of league schools and grad rates:
  1. Bucknell 100 percent
    Holy Cross 100 percent
    Lafayette 100 percent
    Navy 100 percent
  2. Army 97 percent
  3. Lehigh 93 percent
  4. Colgate 92 percent
  5. American 18 percent
  • Complete NCAA graduation rate info
    • Published at 7:00 AM by Hoop Time.
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