College basketball coaches used to tell this joke: The NCAA is so mad at Kentucky that it put Cleveland State on probation for two more years.

The coaches from schools that played at the same level of Kentucky would laugh. The coaches with more in common with Cleveland State would shake their heads knowingly.

All that is supposed to have changed with the advent of the academic progress report.

The NCAA spent years formulating a system that would give a balanced assessment of the academic progress at all its member institutions, not just the ones that were easily disciplined.

This year's APR, released Tuesday, would seem to indicate that the classroom playing field has been leveled.

In Virginia, Hampton, Liberty, VCU, Old Dominion, Norfolk State and Longwood received various levels of sanctions.

None of those schools play at the level of Kentucky.

But Kentucky-level schools such as Southern California, Washington State and Tennessee were hit with severe sanctions.

The University of Alabama-Birmingham, which plays somewhere between VCU and Kentucky, got slapped with the loss of two men's basketball scholarships and nine football scholarships.

All seemed right with the world.

But it is not.

Academic progress must be measured by more than just graduation rates and transfer students leaving a school in good academic standing.

The flaw in all this is the misconception that graduation rates mean universities actually are educating athletes.

That is not necessarily the case. Coaches at colleges across the country encourage student-athletes to follow the path of least resistance.

Instead of majoring in elementary education, a challenging degree track that would actually benefit the player and countless school systems, athletes are funneled into such programs as general studies or consumer affairs.

They graduate, but they leave school wondering exactly what it is they are qualified to do in the real world.

This is not academic progress, nor is it an easy problem to solve.

When the NCAA men's basketball tournament is played, everyone gets caught up in the office pools, the Sweet 16, Cinderella teams and the Final Four.

Every season, a story is published detailing which schools would be in the academic final four. Occasionally, a school such as Davidson, a team filled with academic achievers, reaches the final eight. More often than not, a school such as Southern California powers its way to the Final Four, all the while harboring plenty of athletes but few student-athletes.

When the Bowl Championship Series games take place, the announcers wax poetic about the athletic abilities of the players. No mention is made of academic shortcomings or struggles.

The problem every school faces, even those that received glowing APRs, is that it does not do the work it should on the front end.

William and Mary excelled in eight sports, including two of the most difficult: baseball and football.

William and Mary has some of the toughest admission standards for athletes in the country. Sometimes, coaches there are driven to distraction over who they can't get into school.

Essentially, students admitted to play sports at William and Mary have to fit the student profile of students admitted to study biology, chemistry or history. What a novel idea.

Many universities hide behind these words to admit subpar students: NCAA minimum academic requirements. Then, those schools pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into academic support systems to shepherd through to graduation students who would not be admitted under any other circumstances.

Meanwhile, college admission has become highly competitive, even at large state-supported universities. Parents wonder why their children, with their hard-earned grade-point averages and glowing SAT scores are rejected.

It's a fair question. One day, perhaps parents will rise up and protest so loudly that university presidents, and the politicians who fund the universities, will have to act.

The solution is to admit athletes who really are students and who would be admitted under any circumstances, not just because they stand 6-10 or run the 40-yard dash in a breathtaking time.

That would be academic progress.