The results of March Madness are already in.

But before we get to that, let’s back up to 2010. That’s when some researchers at The Institute of Diversity and Ethics in Sports looked at the graduation rates of the 65 men’s and 64 women’s teams in that year’s tournament, utilizing a metric called the Academic Progress Rate (APR). It’s a formula developed by the NCAA – in response to criticisms that the term “scholar-athlete” was only true on one side of the hyphen – that measures how many of a team’s players successfully graduate within six years. A perfect APR of 1000 equals a 100% graduation rate. And if a team falls below a 925 APR – equivalent to only 60% of their students graduating – they face the loss of some NCAA scholarships.

Back then the researchers found that women hoopsters hit the books as well as they crash the boards. 57 of the 64 women’s teams in the tournament received a passing APR grade, and 19 programs graduated 100% of their players, including all of the #1 seeded teams.

But among the men, not so much. Of the Sweet 16 teams, 4 of them were sanctioned for falling below 925. And there was a troubling discrepancy in performance by race, with whites graduating at a 76% level, while blacks trailed at 49%, and two programs – Maryland and Cal – infamously graduated 0% of their black athletes.

Skip forward to 2025, and what you see is a pattern of steady improvement. Many Division 1 institutions have adopted (sometimes mandatory) academic rule and policy changes that have shown real results. Over the past 15 years, graduation rates among men’s basketball programs have risen from 56% to 87%, with the black subset rising to an almost-parity 84%. And the women, well, they keep leading the way, with over 93% of all D1 basketball players graduating.

Last year the folks at Insider Higher Ed crunched the APR’s to determine which team would win March Madness if it was decided by academic performance. And they’ve just released the numbers for the 2025 tournament, to celebrate the success of the APR program, with Sweet 16 Teams from Memphis to Montana vying for the title.

And who are this year’s winners? Drum roll please! This year’s scholastic champions of March Madness are, for the men, Clemson University and, for the women, Harvard University (with a perfect score, duh!).

All of which suggests this is a great time to acknowledge this performance from one of the finest educational systems in the world…with an executive order to tear the whole thing down.

(Yep, you can make all the policy changes you want, but you can’t teach stupid.)