A new NCAA requirement that governs if a college or university’s athletic teams will have the ability to compete in the postseason is hitting some HBCU’s pretty hard.

The Academic Progress Rate, or APR, is the rule that the NCAA uses to “hold institutions accountable for the academic progress of their student-athletes through a team-based metric that accounts for the eligibility and retention of each student-athlete for each academic term,” according to diverseeducation.com.

This new rule makes it so that all Division 1 schools would be judged by the same APR.

That’s a mouthful.

But APR is judged in four-year periods, so some of the HBCU’s facing expulsion from postseason play are being judged on academic performance starting in the 2013-14 school year.

According to diverseeducation.com, some of the schools that may be on the outs are Florida A&M University, Savannah State University, and Prairie View A&M University. There are 7 HBCU’s with teams facing penalties.

In an effort to comply, those HBCUs, and other schools, are seeking a deferment of at least one year so that they may show improvement in “their performance in the classroom.”

Also–the NCAA gave “limited-resource institutions” “more flexibility to meet the APR standards.”

Still, with HBCU’s already low funding and state legislatures slashing money that goes towards higher education, some of them were bound to struggle.

Hopefully the NCAA grants the APR extension that will allow these HBCU’s to comply with the order. Disrupting athletic programs could mean some serious financial and morale consequences on the HBCUs involved.

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