Kansas University is faring better than the national norm in its graduating of student-athletes.

Reports released by the NCAA Tuesday indicated KU graduated 68 percent of its student-athletes (in a six-year window) who entered college in 1996.

The national average is 62 percent.

KU’s student-athlete graduation rate of 68 percent is well ahead of the rate for all students (57 percent) who graduated from KU in that span. KU’s rate tied for second in the Big 12 with Nebraska. Oklahoma leads the conference at 74 percent. K-State was 11th at 53 percent, and Oklahoma State was 12th at 40 percent.

“I have been real pleased with all our numbers,” said Paul Buskirk, KU associate athletic director/student support services. “We’ve had a five-year progression of increases for our rates of our student-athletes. It’s the fifth year we’ve seen an increase in our rates.

“The original purpose of monitoring graduation rates was to compare an institution’s athletic department to the rest of the institution and not to compare to other schools, which is done all time,” Buskirk added. “We can say our student-athletes are not only doing as well as the rest of the student body, but I’m more pleased to say we’re doing better.”

KU women’s athletes graduated at an 82-percent rate, the men 52 percent. Men’s cross country and women’s basketball had a 100-percent rate for the incoming class of 1996. Football was at 38 percent, baseball 60 percent. Men’s basketball and women’s cross country/track figures were suppressed because of a new interpretation of the Family Education Right and Privacy Act which says information on any category containing only one or two students must be suppressed.

A check of team rosters shows Nick Bradford was KU’s only incoming men’s hoops player in 1996, and he has graduated.

Buskirk noted that a truer indication of how a school was faring was a check of a four-year class average. KU’s student-athletes from incoming classes from 1993 to ’96 graduated at 62 percent, compared to the student-body average of 55 percent.

“We feel a four-year average takes bumps out of the roller coaster,” Buskirk said, “and is a more fair assessment.”