Incentivizing Education: The Unfortunate Necessity of the Academic Payout

The basic idea of academic bonuses for head coaches and college ADs is simple: if a coach’s team or an AD’s department meet certain set requirements, they receive additional money on top of their salaries and other bonuses. A common metric for measuring this academic progress is known as APR, or Academic Performance Rate, although it is certainly not the only standard used in meting out additional funds.

While the notion of having to pay coaches and ADs to keep their student-athletes performing academically bothers some, the reality is that this practice is rife throughout the college athletic ranks. Michael Bowen, a professor in South Florida’s College of Business, observes in an article for USA Today, “In a sense (APR bonuses) are a good thing because the coaches have to be concerned with athletes making progress like a normal student, but why do you have to incentivize coaches to do that?”

Every coach and AD pushing his or her charges to maximize student-athlete effort in the classroom seems like the obvious and correct course of action. After all, it is for that education that these young men and women make tremendous sacrifices socially, physically, and mentally. And while Bowen is correct that it shouldn’t require a monetary payout to motivate coaches to do the right thing, unfortunately the reality of the current college sports landscape is that time and effort in the classroom often runs contrary to the on-field goals of athletic leaders. Perhaps in that way offering these bonuses is a band-aid for a larger systemic problem; if academics and athletics complemented rather than conflicted more than they currently do, then coaches would feel less at odds with pushing their students academically and require less of a tangible reward.

However, on the other hand, students often need a nudge towards the classroom, regardless of their participation in athletics. Many studies have examined a cash payout for high grades, usually with mixed success. What is unique about APR bonuses, though, is that the superiors and not the student-athletes theoretically are incentivized by the monetary pay-outs. Motivating students to work harder and do better in the classroom has been researched for years with inconsistent results. How paying coaches for their athletes’ success in the classroom trickles-down to motivating the athletes themselves is dicey, as improving student academic performance always is.

Not all schools offer APR bonuses to their coaches (Wisconsin, for example, does not, but APR scores do factor into extensions and raises), and the payouts vary wildly both within schools and across the college landscape. The dollars and cents are not just variable, but the requirements schools make of their coaches as well. In a comprehensive piece for Deadspin, Nick Martin culls through dozens of college football coaches’ contracts, noting where APR benefits are paid.

A Sampling of 2014-2015 Head Football Coach Academic Payouts (Unranked; information from Deadspin)
Coach	Total Available Academic Payout	Basis of Payouts
Les Miles, LSU	$200,000	GPA or Graduation Rate or APR of 960+
Mark Helfrich, Oregon	$200,000	APR and GPA
Todd Graham, ASU	$470,000	APR and GPA
Bobby Petrino, Louisville	$250,000	GPA and APR and Graduation Rate
Charlie Strong, Texas	$150,000	APR

The necessity of academic payouts to coaches and ADs is certainly open to discussion. Ideally at an institution of higher learning, challenging all students with high academic standards should be the norm. Furthermore, the already-tenuous practice of paying for grades is more deeply obfuscated by the payout going to superiors rather than the students themselves. However, if sports and academics continue to battle for prominence in the lives of college student-athletes, helping keep the “student” first, even if it costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in academic incentives, is a mandate that must be heeded.