The NCAA released its latest Academic Success Rate data, and Maryville University student-athletes posted an overall ASR of 88 percent for the cohort class that entered college in the fall of 2009, well above the national average of 71 percent.
 
In the latest ASR report, three Maryville athletic programs registered a 100-percent rate: men's golf, women's track and field and women's volleyball. Every Maryville team was above the national average of 71 and none was lower than 78 percent.
 
This is the 11th year the NCAA has released the ASR. The NCAA developed the Division II ASR at the request of college and university presidents who believed the federal graduation rate was flawed. Division II's ASR data takes transfer students into account and removes students who left the institution in good academic standing. In addition, given the partial-scholarship financial aid model of Division II, the ASR data includes student-athletes not on athletically related financial aid. The result is that ASR captures more than 36,000 nonscholarship student-athletes who enrolled from 2006 through 2009, the four years covered in the most recent data.
 
Because of this, ASR captures about 50 percent more student-athletes than the federal rate, largely due to more than 36,000 non-scholarship student-athletes being included in the NCAA calculation. The national four-year ASR average remained steady at 71 percent overall, while the entering class of 2009 held steady at 72 percent from the 2008 cohort.
 
Division II female student-athletes for the entering class of 2008 had an 86 percent ASR, an increase of one point from 2008. The ASR for male student-athletes was 63 percent. Even when the much less inclusive federal graduation rates for Division II are examined, student-athletes are still graduating at much higher rates than the general student body. The Federal rate for the 2009 entering class of college athletes increased one point to 56 percent, while the general student-body rate remained at 49 percent.
 
At the NCAA Convention in January 2014, the Division II membership approved a legislative package intended to increase student-athlete success and graduation rates. The package addresses a variety of academic standards, and includes adjustments to eligibility standards, progress-toward-degree requirements and standards for transfers from two-year colleges. Some of these new requirements are now in effect, and others will take effect in 2018.