Student-athletes at Missouri Valley Conference institutions demonstrated excellent performance in the classroom based on the most recent Academic Progress Rate (APR) data, released on Tuesday, May 6, by the NCAA. A league all-time best 44 programs were among those who received public recognition awards for top academic performance from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

This announcement is part of the overall Division I academic reform effort and is intended to highlight teams that demonstrate a commitment to academic progress and retention of student-athletes by achieving the top APRs within their respective sports. The NCAA annually honors teams earning multiyear Academic Progress Rates in the top 10 percent of all squads in each sport.

Drake had a league-best six programs that posted a perfect multi-year APR score of 1000.  Four other league schools (Belmont, UIC, UNI, and Valparaiso) had five programs that achieved a score of 1000.  The score measures eligibility and retention and provides a snapshot of academic success for each sport.  The MVC's top performing sports were were volleyball and golf, with six men's golf programs, six women's golf programs, and six volleyball programs earning scores of 1000.  The Missouri Valley Conference, meanwhile, tied for the eighth best in overall APR among Division I conferences.

Each academic year, every Division I sports team's APR is calculated using a simple and consistent formula. Scholarship student-athletes can earn 1 point for staying on course for a degree in their chosen major and 1 point for being retained (or graduating) at the end of each academic term. For schools that do not offer athletics scholarships, recruited student-athletes are tracked. This is the fourth consecutive year of publicly reported APRs after a one-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

APRs for each team are available online through the NCAA's searchable database:   Click Here

Additionally, many former student-athletes are returning to the classroom to complete their degrees after exhausting their athletics eligibility. In the past 21 years of the Academic Performance Program, nearly 22,000 student-athletes have gone back to school to earn their degrees and APR points for their former team. For football (6,428), baseball (2,416), and men's (1,657) and women's basketball (761), more than 11,000 former student-athletes have returned to college and earned degrees.