The University of Minnesota announced today its intent to provide education-related financial support to student-athletes starting in Fall 2022.
This is now permissible due to a recent change in NCAA legislation, which enables institutions to provide education-related financial support to student-athletes.
"I am pleased that the University of Minnesota is able to offer education-related financial support to our student-athletes," said Director of Athletics
Mark Coyle. "Our student-athletes continue to excel at a high level on and off the field and have set recent records with regard to GPA, Academic Progress Rate, Graduation Success Rate, Academic All-Big Ten honorees, Big Ten Distinguished Scholars and Academic All-Americans. We continue to look for ways to enhance the student-athlete experience and how best to prepare them for life during and after college. While we are still finalizing these plans in detail, we know providing education-related financial support is another step in the process of supporting our student-athletes."
In the past year, Gopher student-athletes posted a school-record cumulative GPA of 3.44 and Minnesota registered school records with 431 Academic All-Big Ten honorees, 180 Big Ten Distinguished Scholars, 33 CoSIDA Academic All-District selections, and 15 CoSIDA Academic All-Americans. In the most recent APR scores, six Gopher programs have a perfect multi-year score, while a school record 19 programs have perfect single-year APR scores.
In December 2021, it was announced that Minnesota had a 96 percent Graduation Success Rate (GSR), which was tied with South Carolina to lead all Power Five conference public institutions. Gopher Athletics has now recorded the four highest GSR statistics in school history during the last four years with 94 percent in both 2020 and 2019 and a 93 percent in 2018. The Gophers also rank second in the Big Ten in the current GSR data behind Northwestern.
