Building Accountability without Authority

Is it possible to build accountability even when you don’t have authority?  The case of Myles Brand, president of the NCAA suggests the answer is yes.

Myles Brand, who died September 16, 2009, was the former president of Indiana University and Oregon University.  Brand left the presidency of Oregon to become president of the NCAA, a job with no vote in university policy making and questionable influence, particularly regarding the internal, academic operations of universities.  While president of the NCAA, however, Brand was able to toughen guidelines for athletes and hold schools more accountable for the academic performance of their student athletes.  He did this through publicly released Academic Progress Rates (APRs).

The Academic Progress Rate is a metric used by the NCAA to measure the success of collegiate athletic teams in improving the academic progress of student-athletes. The maximum APR is 1,000 and teams who get less than 925 points – roughly equivalent to a 50% graduation rate – can be penalized with the loss of scholarships or postseason bans.  According to USA Today and NCAA News, APR’s will be calculated for each coach, beginning in 2011, making it possible for recruits and their parents to see how well students do academically under the coach.

APR’s create accountability in two ways: (1) the potential loss of team scholarships or bans for violating NCAA guidelines and, (2) the public knowledge of how well students do academically.  Once performance becomes public, the ensuing questions about that performance require that institutions account for how they stack up against other institutions.  This puts pressure on them to improve their performance, particularly if they have also lost scholarships or postseason bans.  Furthermore, institutions with low APR’s also risk the loss of potential recruits who are seeking academic success.  This puts added pressure on institutions to improve their performance in order to attract good athletes.

The lessons from the NCAA’s use of APR’s suggest that making performance public is one way to increase accountability where one does not have authority.  The NCAA has no authority over the academic policies of individual institutions.  However, through the use of APR’s they are able to make institutions accountable for the academic performance of student athletes.

Making performance public can get people agitated, but it is also a powerful way to increase accountability in the absence of authority.