INDIANAPOLIS — NCAA president Myles Brand sees the progress.

College athletes are earning degrees at record rates, according to an NCAA report released this week, and at higher percentages than the overall student body.

Brand, who has made academic reform his top priority, was encouraged by new NCAA figures that show 79 percent of all student-athletes who entered school in the fall of 2001 have graduated and 78 percent of those who entered college between 1998 and 2001 earned degrees within six years. Both are one-point increases over last year's report and all-time highs.

Still, he acknowledges challenges remain: Students who play men's basketball, football and baseball continue to lag behind student-athletes in other sports.

From 1998 to 2001, men's basketball players graduated at 62 percent, while baseball produced a rate of 68 percent. Football Bowl Subdivision teams had a grad rate of 67 percent, and the Football Championship Subdivision came in at 65 percent. Women's bowling, at 68 percent, was the only other sport to finish below 70 percent.

"We are continuing to make progress toward the goal I established of an 80 percent graduation success rate," Brand said. "While there is still room for growth in some sports, we have seen improvements."

White men's basketball players who enrolled in 2001 graduated at 80 percent, a one-point drop from last year's report. Black men's basketball players, however, continued to improve, with 58 percent graduating, a two-point increase from last year and up 12 points over the seven years the NCAA has tracked the numbers.

To some, these are encouraging trends.

"I'm confident enough to say that we still need to work on decreasing the gap between white athletes and African-American athletes overall," said Richard Lapchick, who leads the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. "But this is really good news for college sports."

The newest NCAA graduation statistics were significantly higher than statistics compiled by the federal government, which showed 64 percent of student-athletes who started college from 1998 to 2001 graduated in six years. That's two points higher than the overall student body.

Federal statistics do not include transfer students' performances. For example, if an athlete enrolls at one school, then transfers to another, neither school receives credit when that athlete graduates.

Brand said that including transfers increases the number of student-athletes measured by 37 percent, and Lapchick said he considered the NCAA's measurement a more accurate number.

Six schools — Alcorn State, Campbell, Canisius, Colgate, Manhattan and Valparaiso — graduated 100 percent of their student-athletes for the one-year class of 2001-02, the report said.

More than 100 basketball programs and one football program — Alcorn State — had 100 percent graduation rates for athletes who enrolled from 1998 to 2001. Connecticut, Stanford and Tennessee were among the 77 women's programs to achieve that perfect rate; only 27 men's programs matched it, including Florida State, Marquette, Notre Dame, Wake Forest and Western Kentucky.

"I think increasing the initial eligibility standards means student-athletes are better prepared to succeed when they enter college," Brand said.

During that same four-year enrollment period, 75 men's basketball teams failed to graduate half their athletes, and 26 college football teams also were under 50 percent. A dozen women's basketball programs had less than 50 percent, and just two — Kansas and West Virginia — were from power conferences.

The numbers can be affected by players who turn pro before their senior seasons, and squad size — football has a limit of 85 scholarships compared to 13 in men's basketball.

The worst scores among the three major sports were produced by Jackson State and two schools in California. Jackson State had a zero; Fresno State graduated 7 percent and Cal State-Northridge was at 8 percent, all in men's basketball. In comparison, the lowest scoring program in football was Savannah State in Georgia at 30 percent. North Carolina A&T and Florida International shared that distinction in women's basketball at 38 percent.