 Big news out of collegiate sports a lawsuit from former and current student athlete at historically black institutions looks to hold to account the NCAA for what they call a systemic and long-standing division and separation In monitoring academic progress among the black colleges and other member institutions here to talk with us today a friend of the So dr. Monique osatelou the founder and chief data consultant at data-driven consulting and solutions Who talks about some of the numbers and the perspectives behind APR academic progress rate in the NCAA and the disparate impacts It's had on black athletes over a number of years. So dr. Osatelou is again, it's an honor to have you on today. Thank you for having me on again. I appreciate it Thank you. So first let's let's give some folks some of your background How long have you been studying? academic progress rate in the NCAA as it pertains to race and to Some of the small institutions and particularly the historically black colleges definitely about five years So it's going on six years. So ever since I started my doctoral program I'm actually a former division one track and field athlete. And so just from my experience I've been interested in just evaluating NCAA and how it works And so I've been doing this through search about for five or six years And it continued to stem from my dissertation which I continue to do after I completed my doctoral program You have discovered that there are Significant differences in the ways that HBCUs receive sanctions and academic progress rate But I think that before we get into that conversation Can you just for listeners who are unfamiliar with what APR is can kind of break down? I guess the formulaic approach that the NCAA has said Here's what it takes for an institution to be Compliant and eligible based on the academic performance of his graduates Definitely. So in theory the APR academic progress rate It's under the umbrella of the academic performance program Which it was a means to be able to track academic progress to go towards graduation So the NCAA tracks two indicators. They look at retention That means being able to retain the same student-athlete at the same institution year after year And then they look at academic eligibility. Are you making progressive? Progress towards your degree Based on those two metrics the NCAA has created a calculation of point system where they give teams a point And so if you meet a certain standard then it determines if you receive a penalty or not And so now the current standard is 930 which they have equated To be equal to about a 50% graduation rate So in theory the whole concept is if you're graduating about 50% of your athletes on your team Good job. If you're not then your athletes deserve to be penalized And it's in hopes that decreasing your competition season not letting you do postseason bans You will redirect your efforts to focus on your academics and improve your graduation rates But note that this metric is based on the previous four years. It's not actually real time What is it that has created some of the disparities for HBCUs in the way that APR is Considered I know that they're multi-layered and they don't target HBCUs but some of the the resource issues with HBCUs and some of the Nuances of when athletes come into a program when they leave when they graduate In comparison to when African-American students typically come into a collegiate experience and when they graduate There are correlations between why there's this constant Idea that HBCUs underperform when academic progress. Can you talk about some of those disparities? Yeah, so like you said, there are a lot of layers to it So when you look at it overall on a high level, it really comes down to resources and mission, right? So as we understand the historical Underpinnings of funding at black colleges how they originally referred to and then they became HBCUs We know that they are significantly underfunded and the institutional wealth gap Just even in division one is very large, right? And so they've already determined that there are about all Division one HBCU schools are in the bottom 15% of athletic budgets for division one And so they're all designated as limited resource Institutions right and so that includes all of our division one HBCUs And so it's a huge difference in resources on an institutional wealth level and then when you break it down a little bit further There is also a resource issue looking at athletic departments in their budgets And so that's a huge thing and so when there are resource issues There are resource issues and be able to support the academic progress of your student athletes So what does that look like? advisors Racial student to athlete advising them on what type of classes they should take to be able to juggle their athletic commitments You know with their course load things of that nature tutoring and so there's so many things that trickles down to the student level based on resources and then secondly is the mission Right? We know the mission of HBCUs. It came from segregation as a means for us to provide us education Us meaning black people. That's how I identify myself Education to better ourselves and get opportunities to higher learning, right? And so it has continued to be of even more use now It's very very useful now because it provides what people say a second chance So giving opportunities for students who are academically at risk HBCUs do a great job at educating first-generation college students low-income students and so things of that nature So their whole student body their mission Even their practices are very different from non HBCUs or predominantly white institutions Which makes it very different to reach this uniform standard. What is what are some of the most? stunning statistics from APR Sanctions between HBCUs and PWIs that you have seen over the last several years that really make you think like wow This is really This is really not fair. This is really there's there's no way the HBCUs can keep up with this What are what are some of the I guess the anecdotes that you have viewed and said this best illustrates? How far this gap is between one set of schools and another yeah, so I think I'll get to the statistics part But it's something that I read literally the first two weeks of me doing this research and I said this is my research area I was reading an article that was written by a researcher at NCAA part of their research team And they basically stated that the NCAA was aware of very beginning when they were even creating this metric That HBCUs would have a challenging meeting this metric However, when they implemented in 2003 They didn't provide any supports to be able to mitigate that discrepancy and being able to reach this metric And so from the start they were already at a disadvantage and it in the NCAA didn't do anything to assist them and provide supports to help But then when I began to really look at the data from the beginning 2003 almost two decades later HBCUs have been disproportionately penalized. So There are times when they're about seven there are years. I can't remember the specific years and I apologize But during the past ten years there have been years about 75 percent of the sports teams that have been sanctioned our HBCUs And it's ridiculous because HBCU athletics They make about six percent of all sports teams, but they are Portionally represented as receiving these penalties. I think for me another thing I saw in my research is I evaluated the very early years so 2005 to 2010 And during that time they had like a two-tiered system where at that time the standard was 900 for the absolutely lowest benchmark And so if you reached 900 you really got more severe penalties Well below 900 overwhelmingly was more non HBCUs below the 900 standard But during that time HBCUs were about three times as likely to receive a penalty When non HBCUs with similar low APR scores receive nothing So it's not an issue How is that possible? You know very good question. I email NCA asked, you know, what's going on? Why aren't they're uniformly receiving treatments and they just let me know what you see in the data is correct So I can't answer that question for you and that's what it really gets to me as far as this inequity in this issue about race Um really coming down to it is because even when you have comparable scores There's still being disproportionately penalized compared to their PWI counterparts What has been some of the data reflective of the ways that I guess the NCAA has has worked to address some of those issues because they've created Funding programs for for schools that have been on a PR sanction, you know We'll give you a grant you can hire a compliance person You can you can get more technology in your department has that changed the trend marks Of punishment and sanction over the years or have you maintained or what what has been the trend now? That's a good point. So, um, the trend has kind of been the same But I did do an evaluation where I did try to see if receiving the funding had a positive impact on APR scores And actually the impact really were with the male teams the men's teams Which is disproportionately more men's teams receiving penalties So it makes sense the teams that are having the most issue you'll actually see the biggest jump So it was effective in helping them reach APR. Was it effective in graduation rates, which is their ultimate goal? That's the that's the that's the question that's still waiting And I think for me the issue that I have with these grants is this whole concept of theory Everything sounds great in theory like they're helping but they literally waited until 2013 10 years after You know these APR penalties have already reached habit and they knew from the beginning that they would and so But still even receiving these grants is still not enough to mitigate that institutional wealth between non HBCs and HBC sports programs Let's talk about the The the idea and I think this is more to your your life as a student athlete What does it mean? From an athletic perspective if you see a team on sanction, you know You can't compete in postseason play. Um, in your case, this would be, you know, track and field nationals You know, certain invitationals, uh, you know to not have the same level of practice time That plays a major role in your being you're being able to compete with the best in the country Um, from a from a from a marketing perspective or a recruitment standpoint How do those those sanctions really embed into family's decision and athletes decision to choose one school over another? Definitely. So let's say I'm a freshman coming in If they did not meet the APR metric the previous four years and I'm coming in I'm automatically going to be penalized as well Even though this is my first time stepping on campus and sitting down in the classroom And so what ends up happening is this whole theory that I've been developing of it's about the dismantling of HBC Athletic programs through the use of institutional policies, right? And so it's this idea that If I'm going to if I want to go to an hbc This is the institution I want to go to but they have a penalty I am then going to look at other options and what you begin to see is literally this hydraulic displacement of black athletic talent Leaving hbc use and going to non-hbc use not because that's their original intent But because of these barriers that have been implemented by academic policies that ncaa has had A constant pattern of using them to disadvantage not only black institutions, but black student athletes And I can say because I was a former track and field athlete If I was in that position, I'd be lucky because it's an individual sport So They have some waivers to allow track athletes if you were okay You weren't the one to cause it to be able to compete But if you're in a sport like a team sport like football Basketball then if your team doesn't make it regardless of how well you did you miss out on that opportunity for march madness To be seeing that visibility of allowing us to be on that that platform Do you feel like HBC use are at a disadvantage not in the way of of competing in the in the air of apr But our ability resource wise to just to game the system For example, you hear all the time about football teams basketball teams Men's and women's basketball A certain set of scholarships can go to a certain amount of students who would perform well and rise the tide Of the overall, uh, you know graduation rate at the team Um, it is it's not cheating, but it is it's gaming the system That's something that you think smaller schools agencies just can't Can't take advantage of because scholarship, you know Alliances are what they are. Here's the mission of the school What do you think prohibit the school from from diving into those loopholes like other institutions do? Yeah, definitely. So like you said, there's a lot of layers I mean you begin to peel back the onion you really realize that apr actually is based only on student athletes who are receiving scholarships So it's not based on the entire team only those who are receiving student Athlete scholarships And so like you said if if you're at an institution that has a great endowment awesome booster club They can create these scholarships so that you can still be funded You know, I know that I have an athlete that is not going to be a high academic achieving athlete But they're amazing on the field on the court We need them for this actual enterprise of athletics And so what they'll do is they will provide create these alternative Institutional scholarships and that student has a full ride and they still get to participate in everything like that HBCs don't have that latitude and flexibility to really gain the system in that way and then on top of that Programs that have more resources. They actually have people that that's their job is to figure out How we're going to meet the apr metric and let's intervene because if I see something's all I can actually say go to the coach and say hey You got a few athletes that are going to cause you all to miss this apr story You need to make some adjustments again that staffing that support that more comprehensive Athletic academic programs have that is not comparable at all hbc use within division one You've been doing this work for years. You've done a whole bunch of interviews about your research and analysis of these numbers I got to tell you it's not your question to answer, but I will ask it Do you ever wonder and look at like, you know, why the hell do hbc you stick with it? And and what or what alternatives could be? Obviously if you're going to stay with it the answer is more money Why did that then then you ask the question or have you ever found yourself asking the question? Why do you keep running into this wall? Yeah, I asked myself that question. I also ask myself Are there efforts to actually challenge this metric from hbcu leadership? Just because I do research quantitative research So I don't always get the people to people interaction So I do have those questions and I and I do ask myself Why if you know that it's disadvantage in your students and having an adverse effect on your athletic programs I don't know why but it is something that definitely does keep me up at night wondering, you know I see it. I'm showing the data. I'm showing these issues and why after two decades there hasn't been any change There's a fascinating question and and we are grateful that you are a thought leader And a numbers cruncher on these efforts Plug your plug your plug your company So we can get you on campus talking about some of these issues and consultants of our hbcu's On apr issues and possible solutions Yeah, definitely. So I'm founder and chief data consultant of my data consulting firm data driven consulting and solutions Where I do just this I provide data analytics to be able to help collegiate athletic departments improve academic outcomes and the list goes on Um, and you can reach me at ddcns.com You can also find me on my twitter handle at monique. I should tell you or also on linkedin on my name Monique. I should tell you