A total of 90 Division I men’s 0r women’s swimming programs (59 women’s, 31 men’s) boasted 100% graduation success rates for the 2012-2013 academic year based on athletes who graduated college in 2006, which was part of an overall upward trend in NCAA graduation rates.
The NCAA Graduation Success Rate – which varies from the federal definition in that the NCAA counts athletes who transfer out while in good academic standing while the federal rate doesn’t recognize transfers – for Division I as a whole sat at 82 percent for 2006-entered athletes. That’s the highest it’s ever been, helped by specific subgroups like FBS football players (68%) and African-American men’s basketball players, also at 68%: the highest rates since the NCAA began tracking these figures with the classes entering college in 1995.
In total, men’s swimmers entering college in the class of 2006 graduated or transferred in good standing 83.7% of the time – actually a downward trend for the sport as a whole, and just 6th among Division I sports.Women’s swimming is also on a slight downward trend, but with 91.2% of those entering in 2006 graduating, they’re doing much better than the men. That number, however, ranks them only 10th among 18 sports outlined in this presentation – behind the nation’s top-performing sport of water polo.
Four-year moving averages for the classes entering school in 2003-2006 for men were at 84% (down from 85% for 2002-2005) and 91% for women (down from 92% from 2002-2005).
Overall, though, college athletes still graduate at a much higher rate than their peers by 18% points (though there are many exceptions to this rule at individual institutions).
Some teams that are very good in the pool also performed very well in graduations, including perfect scorers like the Louisville men the Notre Dame men and women, the UNLV men, the Stanford men and women, the Georgia Tech women, the Indiana women, the Liberty women, the Michigan women, the Northwestern women, and the Ohio State women.
Other big name programs, however struggled. Texas A&M’s men’s team had only a 50% graduation rate: 3rd-worst in the country, and Tennessee sat at only 60%.
To explore the full rate of one-year statistics, see this interesting database.