Cowboy football ranks among nation's best in academic BCS rankings

Thursday, December 11, 2008

(December 11, 2008   STILLWATER, Okla.) OSU Athletics — Oklahoma State ranks seventh overall and is the top-ranked Big 12 Conference School in the New America Foundation’s Higher Ed Watch Academic BCS Rankings.

Higher Ed Watch’s Academic BCS formula uses all of the available public data on the academic performance of football players to compile its own ranking of the nation’s college teams. The rankings are based on team graduation rates, disaggregated by race, and Academic Progress Rates (APR), a measure of how players are progressing towards a degree.

The formula starts with the team’s most recent federal graduation rate, and each team gains or loses points based on the gap between the team’s graduation rate and the overall school’s graduation rate and the gap between the team’s black-white player graduation rate disparity and the overall school’s disparity.

Finally, the team gains or loses points if its APR exceeds or falls below the Division I-A median.

OSU finished seventh in the 2008 Academic BCS Rankings, while Boston College led the rankings for the second-straight year with 122 points.

For further information on this year’s rankings, log on to www.newamerica.net/blog/ .