Oct. 3, 2007

LOGAN, Utah - Utah State's Graduation Success Rate (GSR), the now three-year old metric to identify how student-athletes graduate, stands at 77 percent it was announced by the NCAA national office on Wednesday.

The rate, which is only one percentage point lower than last year's rate of 78 percent, is a four-year average encompassing the 1997-2000 classes.

The GSR was devised to be a more true indicator of how institutions graduate students. It takes into account student-athletes who transferred to an institution and graduated, and discounts student-athletes who transfer away from an institution.

The federal graduation rates, the metric commonly used prior to the GSR, does not count transfer students to an institution who graduate, and any student who transfers from an institution counts against that institution. Utah State's federal graduation rates four-year average is 55 percent.

The latest national GSR figures show that 77 percent of student-athletes who began college from 1997-2000 graduated within six years. That four-year graduation rate is unchanged from last year's data and up from 76 percent two years ago.