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From the Orlando Sentinel:

While overall academic progress continued for the 67 bowl-bound teams this season, the gap between white and African-American football players increased slightly, according to a study released Monday by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at UCF.

This year, 61 of the 67 schools (91 percent) had at least a 50 percent graduation rate for their football teams. That is the same as in the 2008-09 report and up from 88 percent in the 2007-08 report. About 90 percent of the teams received a score of more than 925 on the NCAA’s academic progress rate (APR), compared to 88 percent in the 2008-09 report.

But there still is the issue of the differing graduation rates for white and African-American football players: of the bowl-bound teams, 21 (31 percent) graduated less than half of their African-American football student-athletes, while only two schools graduated less than half of their white football student-athletes.

Richard Lapchick, the director of the Institute and the author of the study “Keeping Score When It Counts: Assessing the 2009-10 Bowl-bound College Football Teams — Academic Performance Improves but Race Still Matters” said the academic reforms enacted by late NCAA president Myles Brand have been effective but there is more work to do.

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