GREENSBORO, N.C. – UNC Greensboro (UNCG) Athletics received the highest NCAA Graduation Success Rate (GSR) in program history at 95-percent, released Wednesday afternoon.

It is the fifth-consecutive year UNCG's score has met or exceeded the NCAA's 90-percent benchmark. The Spartans had a 94-percent GSR in 2023 and 2021.

Eight UNC Greensboro (UNCG) athletic programs posted a perfect score of 100. The Spartan athletic programs that reached scores of 100 included men's basketball, men's cross country/track, men's tennis, women's golf, women's soccer, softball, women's tennis and volleyball.

"We are very proud of our student-athletes, coaches and staff for setting a record-setting GSR," stated Director of Athletics Brian Mackin. "The fact that our teams have maintained or improved the GSR is a testament to the commitment of those student-athletes but also to our academic support staff and our coaches."

Figures released by the NCAA Wednesday reflect graduation numbers among student-athletes who entered college in 2017. Since 2002, overall student-athlete GSR has increased from 74% to 91%.

Among The Southern Conference (SoCon), 36 women's programs and 25 men's programs achieved perfect scores of 100 for the 2014-17 cohorts. Nine of the 10 league schools had at least one men's program earn a perfect score, while the same number of SoCon schools had at least two women's programs earn a 100.

UNCG is the fifth-best GSR in the state of North Carolina. Davidson led the way with a 98-percent, while Duke was second with 97-percent and Wake Forest and Elon followed with 96-percent.  

A metric developed by the NCAA as part of its academic reform initiative, the GSR is used to assess the academic success of student-athletes. The GSR also allows schools to subtract student-athletes who leave their institutions before graduation as long as they would have been academically eligible to compete had they remained.   

ABOUT THE GSR
The Graduation Success Rate was developed by the NCAA as part of its academic reform initiative to more accurately measure the success of Division I student-athletes.

The GSR takes into account the many different academic paths followed by today's college students.

Unlike the federal graduation rate, the GSR holds institutions accountable for transfer students. The GSR also accounts for midyear enrollees and is calculated for every sport.

By counting incoming transfer students and midyear enrollees, the GSR increases the total number of student-athletes tracked for graduation.

Under the GSR calculation, institutions are not penalized for outgoing transfer students who leave in good academic standing. These outgoing transfers are essentially passed to the receiving institution's GSR cohort. 

The NCAA also calculates the federal graduation rate for student-athletes, because it is the only rate to compare student-athletes to the general student body.

The most recent Graduation Success Rates are based on the four entering freshmen classes in Division I from 2014 through 2017.

This year marks the 23^rd year of GSR data that has been collected. The NCAA began collecting GSR data with the entering freshman class of 1995. The latest entering class for which data is available is 2017.

For complete statistics on GSR and Federal Graduation Rates, please visit www.ncaa.org.