photo by: Mike Yoder

From left, KU basketball senior Jordan Juenemann, coach Bill Self, and players Tyshawn Taylor and Conner Teahan gather for a photograph before Sunday's KU commencement at Memorial Stadium.

If you don’t count the ones who transferred or otherwise left the university in good academic standing (i.e. went pro), every University of Kansas men’s basketball player who came to KU between 2006 and 2009 went on to graduate in six years or less, according to newly released stats from the NCAA and KU Athletics. Just one other KU team equaled the men’s basketball team’s 100-percent “Graduation Success Rate”: women’s golf.

The NCAA released Graduation Success Rates this week for athletes at Division I schools nationwide, and I also requested team breakdowns from KU Athletics.

KU men’s Graduation Success Rates were higher than the national rates in all sports except cross country/track, according to the breakdowns I got. KU women’s Graduation Success Rates were lower than the national rates in all sports except golf and soccer.

Note that the Graduation Success Rate measurement used here was developed to take into account the mobility of student athletes, according to the NCAA. The Graduation Success Rate formula accounts for student-athletes who transfer in to their school and does not penalize schools for student-athletes who leave in good academic standing. In comparison, the traditional federal graduation rate reflects the percentage of first-year, full-time students who entered a school on athletics aid and graduated from the same school within six years; it doesn’t account for students who transfer and graduate elsewhere.

In KU basketball-speak, that means one-and-dones don’t count against the team’s graduation rate. (So, Josh Jackson, if worries about trashing KU’s graduation rate keep you up at night should you find yourself weighing the NBA draft after this season, you can relax thanks to this metric.)

This is the men’s basketball team’s fifth straight year to have a 100 percent Graduation Success Rate, according to KU Athletics. In other highlights, the football team’s Graduation Success Rate of 81 percent was a record-high for the program. Overall, KU athletes had a Graduation Success Rate of 85 percent and a federal graduation rate of 72 percent.

Here’s a full list of Graduation Success Rates (with federal graduation rates in parentheses) for KU and Division I schools nationwide. The numbers reflect percentages of scholarship athletes who entered the programs from 2006 to 2009.

Graduation Success Rates for KU

Men’s sports

Baseball — 80 (59)

Basketball — 100 (38)

Cross country/track — 71 (39)

Football — 81 (72)

Golf — 88 (71)

Women’s sports

Basketball — 86 (75)

Cross country/track — 82 (75)

Crew/rowing — 90 (81)

Golf — 100 (83)

Soccer — 92 (92)

Softball — 87 (73)

Swimming — 78 (64)

Tennis — 80 (50)

Volleyball — 85 (92)

Graduation Success Rates for Division I overall

Men’s sports

Baseball — 79 (50)

Basketball — 76 (47)

Cross country/track — 80 (65)

Football (FBS) — 74 (61)

Football (FCS) — 73 (58)

Golf — 86 (67)

Women’s sports

Basketball — 87 (63)

Cross country/track — 88 (72)

Crew/rowing — 94 (82)

Golf — 93 (75)

Soccer — 91 (73)

Softball — 89 (71)

Swimming — 93 (79)

Tennis — 93 (72)

Volleyball — 92 (71)

Source: KU Athletics

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• I’m the Journal-World’s KU and higher ed reporter. See all the newspaper’s KU coverage here. Reach me by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187, on Twitter @saramarieshep or via Facebook at Facebook.com/SaraShepherdNews.