The progress toward degree rule, commonly referred to as the 40-60-80 rule, is a piece of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) legislation designed to increase retention and graduation rates of NCAA Division I student athletes. The legislation, that took effect for first time freshmen in 2003, states that by the beginning of the student-athlete’s third year of college enrollment, they must have completed 40% of the classes required toward a specific degree. This rate of progress toward a specific degree must continue so that by the beginning of the student-athlete’s fourth year, they must have completed 60% and by the beginning of their fifth year, they must have completed 80% of their required coursework toward a specific degree. This legislation, part of many academically oriented rules the NCAA has put into place over the past 20 years, was written in response to several calls for reform of "big time" college athletics including, most notably, the Knight Commission.
Famous quotes containing the words progress and/or degree:
“Met face to face, these Indians in their native woods looked like the sinister and slouching fellows whom you meet picking up strings and paper in the streets of a city. There is, in fact, a remarkable and unexpected resemblance between the degraded savage and the lowest classes in a great city. The one is no more a child of nature than the other. In the progress of degradation the distinction of races is soon lost.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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