UConn posts school-wide record for graduation rate

As the NCAA’s annual graduation success rate (GSR) results were released Wednesday, UConn recorded its highest GSR in school history. Across all sports, UConn varsity athletic programs posted a GSR of 89, two percent higher than the national average of 87 percent.

Graduation success rate is designed to track graduation of student-athletes over a six-year span and to factor in transfers leaving and coming into the program. With GSR, transfers that leave the program in good academic standing do not negatively impact the school’s rating. The rate is a rolling average over four years, so student-athletes from 2007-10 are included in the calculation.

The UConn women’s basketball team posted a GSR of 100 percent once again, one of five Huskies teams with a perfect score. Football posted a GSR of 80, but it was the men’s basketball who showed the most improvement, posting a GSR of 67, a dramatic increase from 22 last year.

Overall, the team’s 67 GSR is the highest in since GSR began being calculated in 2005, and represents a more than an eight-fold increase since 2013, when the Huskies posted an abysmal eight percent GSR.

With the GSR spanning from 2007-10, men’s basketball’s recruiting class of 2010 factors into the ratings. This group of two-time national champions - Shabazz Napier, Niels Giffey and Tyler Olander - all graduated after winning their second title in 2014 and are a major factor in the team’s dramatic GSR increase.

Going forward, there’s a very good chance this number will continue increase due to the school’s commitment to academics from both head coach Kevin Ollie, athletic director David Benedict, and president Susan Herbst. The addition of Pat Lenehan and Nnamdi Amilo’s graduation class next year to the GSR - two former walk-ons that finished their career as scholarship players and are now in medical school - should raise this number even further when GSRs are released next fall.