How provision is arranged
The policies, arrangements and services a student athlete encounters, and how they operate together across the academic year.
Dual career provision in higher education
Universities make dual careers possible.
More than any other institution, a university is where elite sport and serious study are held together. IDCE is a specialist practice working with universities on the provision that supports their student athletes, across the academic year.
Our mission
To support the institutions that make it possible for student athletes to pursue education and sport to the best of their ability.
The European Commission set out the aim in 2012: to avoid the situation where talented and elite sportspeople are forced to choose between education and sport.
Our field
Dual career provision is our only area of work.
Provision is distributed across several parts of a university, and each part is accountable to its own measures. The experience of a student athlete is formed by all of it together. Our work is concerned with that whole.
What it is producing
An informed account drawn from the people involved and the institution's own material, in place of assumption.
Where it goes next
Considered advice on strengthening provision, developed for the institution's own regulations, resources and priorities.
Two practices
Consultancy and independent audit.
Two distinct practices, with distinct purposes and separate terms of engagement.
Practice one
Consultancy
Advisory work with universities on their dual career provision, conducted across the academic year. Each engagement opens with an assessment of the institution's circumstances, constraints and priorities, and the advice is developed from that assessment.
The consultancy practicePractice two
Independent audit
A structured, independent examination of how a dual career environment is operating, measured against the commitments the institution has already made, and reported for leadership and committee use.
The audit practiceRecognised in policy
The case for examining dual career provision is long established.
The EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes, published by the European Commission in 2012, have shaped how governments, sport bodies and educational institutions approach the combination of sport and study. They observe that quality control has a long tradition in education while in sport it is often neglected, and they recommend regular internal control and external monitoring of dual career facilities and supporting services.
The same section recommends regular independent evaluation of services and facilities, and states that evaluation should include consultation with the athletes themselves.
European Commission
Guidelines recommending internal control, external monitoring and independent evaluation of dual career provision.
Council of the European Union
Conclusions on dual careers inviting consideration of how implementation could be measured.
FISU
A global university certification programme built on documented criteria and an external audit cycle.
How we work
Built around your institution.
We begin with what you already know, then listen to the people who experience and deliver the work. The aim is to give you a clearer account of your contribution and useful evidence for what comes next.
- ListenA conversation with the people responsible for provision, covering their position and the outcomes they are accountable for. No cost and no obligation.
- UnderstandA defined piece of work establishing how provision is operating, drawing on the institution's own people and material.
- AdviseConsidered recommendations, developed for the institution's regulations, resources and calendar, and delivered with the reasoning behind them.
- ContinueWork alongside the institution across the academic year while agreed changes take effect.
An engagement may conclude at the end of any stage. Where the first is sufficient, we will say so.
Frequently asked
Before you get in touch.
What is the story behind Athle Labs Co?
My working life began in my family's business, JLS Medical Services. It is an independent medical services company founded by my parents, Dr Lynval Jones and Dr Sylvia Hall, incorporated in 2020 and still running today. While I worked alongside them, they supported me in pursuing elite sport with a Premier League football (soccer) academy.
They backed my football, but they were equally clear that my education had to continue at a high level. After a meeting with the Academy Director, it became clear that the academy did not allow for that at the time. I had to choose between sport and education. I chose sport and completed one year of a two-year scholarship. Then I decided to return to education, even though the club wanted me to stay.
Since then, I have lived much of what student-athletes describe: the pressure, the demands on time, the transitions and the shifts in identity that come with living in two worlds at once. My academic route came full circle when I received a scholarship of a different kind, this time to pursue a PhD on elite athletes' experiences across universities. Over three years, I have spoken with athletes of different ages, genders, sports and degree programmes at a range of universities. My thesis is due for submission in 2027.
I launched Athle Labs Co to support the institutions that make it possible for athletes to pursue elite sport and education at the same time. That support was not there for me when I needed it.
Today, I lead ALC's independent work with universities to understand the impact behind student-athlete outcomes. The work draws together my family's medical services background, my doctoral research and my research roles with [Loughborough University, the IOC, World Athletics, the FEI, FISE and others]. The work helps institutions make more of their contribution visible by showing:
• how student-athletes and staff actually experience current provision
• which people, programmes and forms of support are making a meaningful contribution
• where that impact could be strengthened or extended further
I am supported by Dr Lynval Jones and Dr Sylvia Hall as Senior Advisors, and by external advisors I have worked with across doctoral and research projects. Athle Labs Co is independent and is not affiliated with any university.
What happens in a first conversation?
It is a structured discussion of your provision, the outcomes you are working towards and the requirements you are accountable for. There is nothing to prepare and nothing to sign. It concludes with our view on whether we can be useful, including where the timing is not right.
Do we have to commit to anything to start?
No. The first conversation carries no cost and no obligation. Any work that follows is scoped and agreed in writing before it begins.
Can you provide both consultancy and audit to the same institution?
Not concurrently, and not on the same subject matter. An audit carries weight only where those conducting it hold no interest in the finding. Our independence policy sets out how the two practices are separated and over what period. We identify which of the two suits your position at the outset.
How does this relate to a national scheme or accreditation?
They are different instruments, and a mature system carries both. Accreditation and network membership recognise an institution's commitment. Our work examines how provision operates and what would strengthen it. We are affirmative of these schemes throughout and are never a substitute for them.
Do you work outside the United Kingdom?
Yes. The office is in London, where the practice was founded and where its legal and professional infrastructure sits. It is a head office rather than a market. Research on the relevant national education system, sporting pathway and funding rules is completed before any engagement begins.
What does it cost?
Fees depend on scope, and scope is set during the first conversation. A written, fixed proposal is provided before you are asked to make any decision.
Institute for Dual Career Excellence
Arrange a conversation.
Tell us what your institution is working on. We will give you a direct view of whether this is work we can help with.
Start a conversationPractice one
Consultancy
Advisory work with universities on their dual career provision, conducted across the academic year. Each engagement opens with an assessment of the institution's circumstances.
The premise
Provision is distributed across the institution.
Dual career support is delivered by several parts of a university at once, each accountable to its own measures and each working with a partial view of the whole. The experience of a student athlete is formed by the combination.
The EU Guidelines make a related observation. They note that the success of dual career arrangements often depends on the goodwill of people in key positions, where what is required is a systematic approach.
European Commission (2012), EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes, section 1.3.
Areas of work
Four broad areas.
The content of an engagement is agreed with the institution and fixed in writing before it begins. These are the areas institutions raise with us.
Establishing the whole picture
An informed account of what exists, how it connects and what it produces, so that decisions rest on evidence.
Strengthening the arrangements
Advice on the arrangements around the student athlete, developed for the institution's own regulations, resources and academic calendar.
Supporting the internal case
Assistance for those presenting this work internally, prepared in the terms their committees already use.
Working with your staff
Practical work alongside the people who deliver provision, so that improvement does not depend on any one individual remaining in post.
How it runs
Engagements run across the academic year.
A dual career environment is shaped by a full academic and competitive year, and our engagements are structured on that timescale. An engagement may conclude at the end of any stage.
- ListenA structured conversation with the people responsible for provision. No cost and no obligation, concluding with our view on whether we can be useful.
- UnderstandA defined piece of work establishing how provision is operating, drawing on the institution's own people and material.
- AdviseConsidered recommendations, delivered with the reasoning behind them and sequenced for practical implementation.
- ContinueContinued work across the year while agreed changes take effect.
What is required of you
The institutional requirement is contained.
Your side of an engagement is agreed in writing before anything begins and planned around the academic calendar.
- One named contact, in place of a standing working group.
- We obtain published material ourselves and schedule the conversations.
- Scope, requirements and timeline are fixed in the engagement letter, so that no new requirement arises part way through.
- You review anything written for factual accuracy before it is finalised.
- All material produced is yours and remains confidential to your institution.
Institute for Dual Career Excellence
Discuss your provision.
The first conversation carries no cost and no obligation, and concludes with a direct view of your position.
Start a conversationPractice two
Independent audit
A structured, independent examination of how a dual career environment is operating, measured against the commitments the institution has already made, and reported for leadership and committee use.
Purpose
An audit establishes what is happening and sets out the evidence for it.
The decisions that follow remain the institution's, and the report is prepared so that its own teams can act on it.
The audit is held as a separate practice from consultancy because the two require a different relationship with the finding.
What is examined
Five dimensions of a dual career environment.
Each dimension is written up in full, with the evidence behind every finding set out. Findings are reported in writing rather than as a score, so that the reasoning behind them remains visible.
Time to outcome integrity
How competitive commitments and the academic timeline operate alongside one another.
Performance continuity
How academic and competitive demand are planned against each other across the year.
Transition readiness
How athletes are prepared for the transition points of a dual career, including unanticipated ones.
Collision recovery
How the environment absorbs periods in which academic and competitive demand peak together.
Support ecosystem coherence
How the functions around the athlete are coordinated with one another.
Corroborated across sources
Evidence is drawn from more than one source and cross-checked, so that no finding rests on a single account. Athlete consultation forms part of this, as the Guidelines recommend.
Measured against
The commitments already made.
An audit holds an institution to its own published policies and commitments, the national or regional dual career framework within which it operates, and the European Commission's dual career guidelines. No proprietary standard of ours is applied.
European Commission, 2012 · Guideline 30
Addressing sports and education authorities, sports organisations and educational institutes together, the Guidelines recommend that they promote regular internal control and external monitoring of dual career facilities and supporting services. The recommendation covers sport and academic results, the qualifications and further education of staff, the safety and accessibility of facilities and services, and the functioning of internal codes of behaviour.
European Commission (2012). EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes: Recommended Policy Actions in Support of Dual Careers in High-Performance Sport. Brussels, 16 November 2012, Guideline 30. Read the Guidelines
Independence
Advisory and audit work are kept structurally separate.
An auditor who also supplies the remedy holds a financial interest in the finding. Assurance and advisory work were separated across the professional services sector for that reason, and the same separation governs this practice.
We do not provide advisory work and an independent audit to the same institution on the same subject matter concurrently, and a defined separation period applies between them in either direction. All known conflicts are disclosed in writing before an engagement begins, under our independence and impartiality policy, which is available before you commit to anything.
Named lead
Every engagement is led by a named lead auditor, who is the named author on the report.
Yours alone
We do not publish findings, do not compare institutions with one another, and do not share your report.
Reviewed before final
You review the draft for factual accuracy before anything is finalised.
Frequently asked
Questions about the audit.
What if some of the findings are difficult?
Every finding is set out with the evidence behind it, so that nothing is presented as opinion, and you review the draft for factual accuracy before it is finalised. A difficult finding delivered privately, with its evidence trail, converts an unknown into a defined position the institution can plan around.
We already run strong provision. What would an audit add?
Independent written evidence of it. An account of a strong environment, produced independently, can be presented to a board, to athletes and to the recruitment market with confidence.
Can our athletes be affected by taking part?
No athlete is assessed, scored or reported on individually. Consultation is voluntary and consent based, and is reported in a form that protects every individual.
Who sees the report?
The institution. It is delivered to leadership, structured for committee use, and it is yours. We do not publish institutional findings, do not name clients without written consent secured after completion, and do not share your data with any third party.
What can we see before committing?
Ahead of any commitment we provide the professional standards note, the independence and impartiality policy, the ethics, confidentiality and data protection position, the privacy notice and the data provenance statement, together with company, insurance and registration details for your procurement team.
Institute for Dual Career Excellence
Discuss an audit.
We would welcome the chance to learn about the work you are already doing and where independent evidence could be useful.
Start a conversationApproach
The policy basis for this work.
The examination of dual career provision has been recommended repeatedly, over more than a decade, by the bodies that shape this field. The sources are set out here in full so that they can be checked.
European Commission, 2012
The EU Guidelines address quality control directly.
The EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes were approved by the EU Expert Group on Education and Training in Sport and published in Brussels in November 2012. They are not a binding instrument. They remain the most widely referenced description of a well designed dual career environment, and they are explicit on the question of quality.
Section 3.3 · Quality framework
The Guidelines state that quality control of the implementation of dual career programmes is necessary to assure the quality of measures and interventions in the longer term, and observe that while quality control has a long tradition in the education sector, in sport this kind of mechanism is often neglected. They recommend that regular independent evaluations cover the quality of services and facilities, and that evaluations include consultation with the athletes, their national federations and any funding agencies.
European Commission (2012). EU Guidelines on Dual Careers of Athletes. Brussels, 16 November 2012, section 3.3.
Guideline 30 · Internal control and external monitoring
Sports and education authorities, sports organisations and educational institutes are recommended to promote regular internal control and external monitoring of dual career facilities and supporting services, covering sport and academic results, the qualifications and further education of staff, the safety and accessibility of facilities and services, and the functioning of internal codes of behaviour.
European Commission (2012), Guideline 30.
Guideline 31 · Quality labels and a European framework
Sports authorities and national sport bodies are recommended to consider developing a national quality label for dual career services and facilities with reference to a European framework. The European Commission is called upon to support the development of a European quality framework for dual career services and facilities in collaboration with the representative bodies in the field.
European Commission (2012), Guideline 31. Read the Guidelines
Taken forward
The direction was carried on by others.
Council of the European Union, 2013
The Council and the representatives of the governments of the Member States adopted conclusions on dual careers for athletes, published in the Official Journal. Among other things, they invited the Commission to consider how the implementation of dual career policy actions could be measured across the Union, and to support the networks that bring dual career stakeholders together.
Council of the European Union (2013). Conclusions on dual careers for athletes. OJ C 168, 14.6.2013, pp. 10–12. Read on EUR-Lex
FISU · International University Sports Federation
FISU maintains a dual career programme with resources for student athletes, national university sport federations and universities, and operates the Healthy Campus certification, under which institutions are assessed against 100 criteria across seven domains and must provide verifiable evidence for each. The labelling cycle includes an external audit process with a report and label renewal. FISU has reported that dual career support sits within those criteria.
FISU, Dual Career programme and FISU Healthy Campus. Dual Career · Healthy Campus regulations
European Athlete as Student network
EAS is the European dual career network for universities, sports schools and other educational establishments, alongside sports clubs and federations. The EU Guidelines name the exchange of information and good practice in the EAS network as a useful model to emulate. EAS works in partnership with the European University Sports Association on dual career activity.
European Commission (2012), section 4.2. About EAS
National systems
The same recognition, in different forms.
The Australian Institute of Sport leads the Elite Sport Education Network, made up of endorsed universities, vocational providers and other education providers committed to supporting elite athletes, coaches and officials for the duration of their study.
Game Plan, a collaboration between the Canadian Olympic Committee, the Canadian Paralympic Committee, Sport Canada and the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute Network, includes an education network of post-secondary institutions.
TASS, the Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme, is delivered through a network of universities, schools and colleges. It is named in the EU Guidelines as an example of good practice.
Each scheme reflects the same recognition, that the environment shapes the outcome. Membership signals commitment. The examination of how provision operates in practice is a separate discipline, and it is the one we practise. We are affirmative of these schemes throughout and are never a substitute for any of them.
Status of these references
Recommendation, not endorsement.
The material set out on this page records what international and national bodies have recommended for the field. None of it constitutes an endorsement of IDCE, and none is claimed. These sources are cited because they are the reason the work exists, and because every one of them can be checked.
No quotation, figure or reference appears in our work unless it is traceable to its source. Where the evidence is thin, we record that rather than fill the gap.
Institute for Dual Career Excellence
Apply this to your institution.
Tell us what you are working on and we will set out how we would approach it.
Start a conversationAbout
A specialist practice.
The Institute for Dual Career Excellence works with universities and sporting organisations on the environments where elite sport and higher education meet.
Our mission
Supporting the institutions that make dual careers possible.
Student athletes should be able to pursue education and sport to the best of their ability without having to choose between the two. How far that is achievable is determined substantially by the arrangement of the institution around the athlete.
Our role is to help make the impact of that work visible, recognise the contribution behind student-athlete outcomes and support institutions in strengthening that impact further.
Why specialist
One field, understood deeply.
Dual career provision sits across departments, which is why no single team tends to own the whole of it. A general consultancy treats it as one case among many. It is our only area of work, and we bring an international evidence base to a subject institutions are frequently addressing alone.
The practice is registered and headquartered in London, where it was founded and where its legal, insurance and professional infrastructure sits. That is a head office rather than a market. Research on the relevant national education system, sporting pathway, funding rules and dual career framework is completed before any engagement begins.
People
Who leads the work.
Engagements are led personally by the practice's founding director, who has spent three years researching dual career environments at doctoral level at Loughborough University London, working with athletes including Olympians, Paralympians and international medallists across a range of national systems.
Senior audit advisers support the practice's methodology and quality review. They are advisers rather than employees, and their role is disclosed at the outset of any engagement.
Governance
The commitments that govern our work.
- Independence is structural. Advisory and audit work are separated, with a defined separation period in either direction, and all known conflicts are disclosed in writing before an engagement begins.
- Confidentiality is the default. Findings remain with the institution. We do not publish, do not compare institutions with one another, and name no client without written consent secured after completion.
- Athlete consultation is conducted under informed consent and reported so that no individual is identifiable to the institution.
- Institutional and academic work are kept strictly separate, under a published data provenance statement. Loughborough University is permanently excluded as a client on declared familiarity grounds.
- Every quotation, figure and reference is traceable to its source, and gaps are recorded rather than filled.
- We claim no endorsement, accreditation or affiliation that we do not hold.
- Where an engagement would not serve an institution, we say so before it commits.
Our professional standards note, independence and impartiality policy, ethics, confidentiality and data protection position, privacy notice and data provenance statement are available on request, along with company, insurance and registration details for your procurement team.
Institute for Dual Career Excellence
Questions before you engage.
Documentation, references and questions of scope are welcome ahead of any commitment.
Start a conversationContact
Start a conversation.
Tell us what your institution is working on. We respond within five working days to arrange a conversation, at no cost and with nothing to sign.
What to expect
The first conversation.
It covers your provision, the outcomes you are working towards, what has already been tried and the requirements you are accountable for. It concludes with our view on whether we can be useful and which of the two practices suits your position, including where the answer is neither.
Institute for Dual Career Excellence
Every conversation concludes with a clear view of your position.
That holds whether or not it leads to an engagement.
Email us directlyEnquiry received
Thank you. Your enquiry has been received.
We will respond within five working days to arrange a conversation. If anything changes in the meantime, or you would prefer to speak sooner, please email us directly.
In the meantime
Further reading.
- Our approach, and the policy record behind this work.
- The consultancy practice, and how an engagement runs across the academic year.
- The independent audit practice, what it examines and what it measures against.
Student-athlete impact
Your outcomes are visible. The impact behind them deserves to be known.
Universities do important work to make elite sport and higher education possible together. We help make the impact of that work visible by understanding how your people, programmes and support contribute to student-athlete experiences and outcomes.
Our mission
To support the institutions that make it possible for student-athletes to pursue education and sport to the best of their ability.
We believe the people and institutions making dual careers possible deserve to understand, demonstrate and receive recognition for the impact of their work.
The opportunity
You already know many of your outcomes. We help reveal the contribution behind them.
Academic progress, graduation, retention, wellbeing and student-athlete experience tell an important part of the story. Behind those outcomes are people, programmes, relationships and moments of support whose contribution is not always visible in the measures themselves.
We bring those contributions into view, giving your team independent evidence of what is making a difference and where that impact could be strengthened further.
Understand what is making a difference
An evidence-led account of how student-athletes experience your people, programmes and support across the institution.
Demonstrate your impact
Independent evidence that helps leadership see the contribution being made behind the outcomes they already monitor.
Make unseen contribution visible
Bring recognition to the staff, practices and support that student-athletes consistently describe as important to their experience.
Extend the impact further
Identify where existing strengths could reach more student-athletes, operate more consistently or create greater value.
How we support institutions
Understand, demonstrate and strengthen your impact.
Our work starts with the institution you have already built, the outcomes you already track and the people who make that work possible.
Independent insight
Make the impact behind your outcomes visible
We bring together existing institutional evidence with student-athlete and staff perspectives to understand what is contributing to outcomes, how that contribution is experienced and what important impact may currently be unseen.
How the work is carried outContinued support
Help the impact go further
Where the evidence identifies an opportunity, we can support your team in developing it around your own priorities, resources and institutional context.
The consultancy practiceThe impact behind the measures
Important outcomes deserve a deeper understanding.
Universities already hold valuable measures of academic progress, graduation, retention, wellbeing and student-athlete experience. Those measures show what is happening. Independent qualitative evidence can help explain the institutional contribution behind them.
That deeper understanding helps make important work visible to the people responsible for recognising, resourcing and strengthening it.
Academic time
Division I median weekly time on academics fell from 38.5 hours in 2015 to 33.5 hours in 2025.
Academic preference
In Division I men's sports, those wanting more time for academics fell from 59% to 42% over the same period.
Outcomes
The Division I four-year APR rose by 2 points to 986, after four years at a steady rate.
Sources: NCAA GOALS Study (2025), published 2026; NCAA, May 2026. Full references on the Evidence page.
How we work
Built around your institution.
We begin with what you already know, then listen to the people who experience and deliver the work. The aim is to give you a clearer account of your contribution and useful evidence for what comes next.
- ListenA conversation with the people responsible for student-athlete support, the outcomes you already track and the work you most want to understand.
- UnderstandWe bring together existing evidence with student-athlete and staff perspectives to understand how support is experienced and where its contribution is being felt.
- EvidenceWe set out what appears to be contributing to outcomes, what important impact may be going unseen and the evidence behind those findings.
- StrengthenWhere useful, we identify practical opportunities to extend that impact further and can support your team as those opportunities are developed.
An engagement may conclude at the end of any stage. Where the first is sufficient, we will say so.
Frequently asked
Before you get in touch.
What is the story behind Athle Labs Co?
My working life began in my family's business, JLS Medical Services. It is an independent medical services company founded by my parents, Dr Lynval Jones and Dr Sylvia Hall, incorporated in 2020 and still running today. While I worked alongside them, they supported me in pursuing elite sport with a Premier League football (soccer) academy.
They backed my football, but they were equally clear that my education had to continue at a high level. After a meeting with the Academy Director, it became clear that the academy did not allow for that at the time. I had to choose between sport and education. I chose sport and completed one year of a two-year scholarship. Then I decided to return to education, even though the club wanted me to stay.
Since then, I have lived much of what student-athletes describe: the pressure, the demands on time, the transitions and the shifts in identity that come with living in two worlds at once. My academic route came full circle when I received a scholarship of a different kind, this time to pursue a PhD on elite athletes' experiences across universities. Over three years, I have spoken with athletes of different ages, genders, sports and degree programmes at a range of universities. My thesis is due for submission in 2027.
I launched Athle Labs Co to support the institutions that make it possible for athletes to pursue elite sport and education at the same time. That support was not there for me when I needed it.
Today, I lead ALC's independent work with universities to understand the impact behind student-athlete outcomes. The work draws together my family's medical services background, my doctoral research and my research roles with [Loughborough University, the IOC, World Athletics, the FEI, FISE and others]. The work helps institutions make more of their contribution visible by showing:
• how student-athletes and staff actually experience current provision
• which people, programmes and forms of support are making a meaningful contribution
• where that impact could be strengthened or extended further
I am supported by Dr Lynval Jones and Dr Sylvia Hall as Senior Advisors, and by external advisors I have worked with across doctoral and research projects. Athle Labs Co is independent and is not affiliated with any university.
What happens in a first conversation?
It is a conversation about the outcomes you already track, the work behind them and the impact you would most value understanding. There is nothing to prepare and nothing to sign. It gives us a chance to understand your institution and whether our support could be useful.
Do we have to commit to anything to start?
No. The first conversation carries no cost and no obligation. Any work that follows is scoped and agreed in writing before it begins.
Can you continue supporting us after the initial work?
Yes. Where the evidence identifies an opportunity the institution wants to develop, we can discuss appropriate next steps while protecting the independence and integrity of the original findings.
How does this relate to the measures we already collect?
Your existing measures remain an important part of the evidence. We help add the explanation behind them by exploring how student-athletes and staff experience the people, programmes and support that contribute to those outcomes.
Do you work in the United States?
Yes. The practice is headquartered in London, where it was founded and where its legal and professional infrastructure sits. Research on the relevant NCAA division, conference and institutional context is completed before any engagement begins.
What does it cost?
Fees depend on scope, and scope is set during the first conversation. A written, fixed proposal is provided before you are asked to make any decision.
Institute for Student-Athlete Excellence
Arrange a conversation.
Tell us what your department is working on. We will give you a direct view of whether this is work we can help with.
Start a conversationPractice one
Understanding the impact behind your outcomes
Independent evidence of how your people, programmes and support contribute to student-athlete experiences and outcomes, including impact that may not be visible in existing measures.
Purpose
Make more of your institution's contribution visible.
Your existing measures show important student-athlete outcomes. We explore the people, programmes, relationships and support behind them, helping you understand how that contribution is experienced and where it matters most.
The work gives your institution independent evidence it can use to recognise important contributions, demonstrate value and identify where existing impact could be strengthened further.
What we explore
The contribution behind the student-athlete experience.
The scope is shaped around your institution and the outcomes that matter to you. Evidence is brought together across the following areas.
People and relationships
Where staff, coaches, faculty and support relationships are making a meaningful contribution to student-athlete experiences.
Programmes and support
How student-athletes experience the programmes and services available to them, and which elements they describe as most valuable.
Academic and personal development
How institutional support contributes to athletes managing study, sport and their wider development across the year.
Variation in experience
How experiences differ across sports, stages and circumstances, including where existing impact may not yet reach everyone consistently.
Institutional contribution
How policies, coordination, resources and everyday practice combine to shape the outcomes and experiences you already monitor.
Evidence across perspectives
Existing institutional evidence is considered alongside confidential student-athlete and staff perspectives so that findings reflect more than a single source.
How it runs
A focused, remote-friendly process.
- GatherWe review relevant existing evidence and speak with the people who deliver and experience student-athlete support. Interviews and focus groups can be conducted remotely.
- UnderstandWe analyse patterns across the evidence to identify important contributions, variation in experience and impact that may not currently be visible.
- ShareYou receive a clear written account of the findings, the evidence behind them and opportunities to strengthen impact further, followed by a leadership briefing.
The cycle
The work can be repeated over time, timed around your transfer windows and academic terms, when rosters have just changed. From the second cycle onward, each report includes a comparison with the last, so that progress is visible over time.
What is required of you
The demand on your staff is contained.
Your involvement is agreed in writing before anything begins and planned around your calendar.
- One named contact, in place of a working group.
- We schedule the conversations and obtain published material ourselves.
- Only de-identified data is requested, under a written data agreement set with your institution before any work begins.
- Scope, requirements and timeline are fixed in writing, so that no new requirement arises part way through.
- You review anything written for factual accuracy before it is finalized.
- All material produced is yours and remains confidential to your institution.
Independence
Advisory and review work are kept structurally separate.
A reviewer who also supplies the remedy holds a financial interest in the finding. Assurance and advisory work were separated across the professional services sector for that reason, and the same separation governs this practice.
We do not provide consultancy and a review to the same institution on the same subject matter concurrently, and a defined separation period applies between them in either direction. All known conflicts are disclosed in writing before an engagement begins, under our independence and impartiality policy, which is available before you commit to anything.
Named lead
Every review is led by a named lead reviewer, who is the named author on the report.
Yours alone
We do not publish findings, do not compare institutions with one another, and do not share your report.
Reviewed before final
You review the draft for factual accuracy before anything is finalized.
Frequently asked
Questions about the work.
What if some of the findings are difficult?
Every finding is set out with the evidence behind it, so that nothing is presented as opinion, and you review the draft for factual accuracy before it is finalized. A difficult finding delivered privately, with its evidence trail, converts an unknown into a defined position the department can plan around.
We already have strong outcomes and support. What would this add?
A deeper understanding of the contribution behind them. Independent evidence can help make visible which people, programmes and practices are making a difference, why they matter to student-athletes and where that impact could go further.
How is student data handled?
Only de-identified data is requested, under a written data agreement set with your institution before any work begins and in line with its obligations under federal student privacy law. No individual student-athlete is identifiable in anything we report.
Can student-athletes be affected by taking part?
No student-athlete is assessed, scored or reported on individually. Participation in the survey is voluntary and anonymous, and results are reported in a form that protects every individual.
Who sees the report?
The institution. It is delivered to leadership and it is yours. We do not publish institutional findings, do not name clients without written consent secured after completion, and do not share your data with any third party.
What can we see before committing?
Ahead of any commitment we provide the professional standards note, the independence and impartiality policy, the ethics, confidentiality and data protection position, the privacy notice and the data provenance statement, together with company, insurance and registration details for your procurement team.
Institute for Student-Athlete Excellence
Discuss your institution's impact.
We would welcome the chance to learn about the work you are already doing and where independent evidence could be useful.
Start a conversationPractice two
Consultancy
Support for institutions that want to build on what the evidence shows, shaped around their own priorities, resources and student-athlete environment.
The premise
Impact is created across the institution.
Academic services, student-athlete development, coaches, faculty, wellbeing teams and campus offices can all contribute to a student-athlete's experience. Our work helps bring those contributions together so the institution can see the wider impact they create.
Areas of work
Four broad areas.
The content of an engagement is agreed with the institution and fixed in writing before it begins. These are the areas departments raise with us.
Establishing the whole picture
An informed account of what exists, how it connects and what it produces, so that decisions rest on evidence.
Strengthening the arrangements
Advice on the arrangements around the student-athlete, developed for the institution's own rules, resources and academic calendar.
Supporting the internal case
Assistance for those presenting this work to leadership, prepared in the terms their committees and boards already use.
Working with your staff
Practical work alongside the people who support student-athletes, helping useful changes become embedded across the institution.
How it runs
Engagements run across the academic year.
Student-athlete experiences are shaped across a full academic and competitive year, and continued support can be structured around that timescale. An engagement may conclude at the end of any stage.
- ListenA structured conversation with the people responsible for student-athlete support. No cost and no obligation, focused on understanding your priorities and where we could be useful.
- UnderstandWe bring together existing evidence with student-athlete and staff perspectives to understand how support is experienced and where its contribution is being felt.
- AdviseConsidered recommendations, delivered with the reasoning behind them and sequenced for practical implementation.
- ContinueContinued work across the year while agreed changes take effect.
What is required of you
The institutional requirement is contained.
Your side of an engagement is agreed in writing before anything begins and planned around the academic calendar.
- One named contact, in place of a standing working group.
- We obtain published material ourselves and schedule the conversations.
- Scope, requirements and timeline are fixed in the engagement letter, so that no new requirement arises part way through.
- You review anything written for factual accuracy before it is finalized.
- All material produced is yours and remains confidential to your institution.
Institute for Student-Athlete Excellence
Discuss the impact of your work.
The first conversation carries no cost and no obligation, and concludes with a direct view of your position.
Start a conversationEvidence
The basis for this work.
The evidence base helps show why understanding the student-athlete experience matters alongside the outcomes institutions already measure. The sources are set out here in full so that they can be checked.
NCAA GOALS Study, 2025
Time on academics is declining.
GOALS is the NCAA's nationally representative study of the student-athlete experience, conducted since 2006. The 2025 study surveyed more than 20,000 student-athletes from 493 schools across all three divisions.
Academic time
The NCAA reports that student-athletes' self-reported time on academics has declined across sport and division in the last decade, noting that it does not have equivalent data for the general student body. Division I median weekly time on academics in-season was 38.5 hours in 2015, 35.5 in 2019 and 33.5 in 2025. Median weekly athletic time was 34 hours in 2015 and 34 hours in 2025.
NCAA (2026). Current findings on student-athlete time commitments: NCAA GOALS Study. March 2026. Read the report
Preference for academics
Among Division I men's sports, the share of student-athletes who would prefer more time on academics fell from 59% in 2015 to 42% in 2025, while the share preferring less time on academics rose from 9% to 16%. Among Division I women's sports, preference for more academic time fell from 66% to 56%.
NCAA (2026), Current findings on student-athlete time commitments.
Where the gap is widest
In Division I, FBS football and baseball reported spending on average 14 more hours a week on athletics than academics in-season, and men's golf 15 more. FBS football reported a median of 45 athletic hours a week, up from 39.5 in 2019.
NCAA (2026), Current findings on student-athlete time commitments.
Course format
Student-athletes taking mostly online classes reported a median of 26.5 hours a week on academics, against 36.5 hours for those taking mostly in-person classes, and the highest weekly time on athletics. The NCAA reports this pattern as consistent across divisions.
NCAA (2026). Understanding today's student-athlete experience: Key findings from the 2025 NCAA GOALS Study. Read the findings
Faculty connection
The share of Division I student-athletes reporting a close personal relationship with at least one faculty member fell between 2019 and 2025, from 58% to 55% in men's sports and from 60% to 56% in women's sports.
NCAA (2026), Understanding today's student-athlete experience.
Outcome measures
Outcomes remain strong.
NCAA, May 2026
The NCAA reported that the national four-year Academic Progress Rate for Division I teams rose by 2 points to 986, after four consecutive years at a steady rate.
NCAA (2026). Division I student-athletes increase academic success. 5 May 2026. Read on NCAA.org
What APR measures
APR is a term-based measure of academic eligibility and retention. Student-athletes earn a point each term for remaining academically eligible and a point for remaining enrolled or graduating. It records whether athletes stay eligible and enrolled; it is not designed to measure how they are engaging with their studies.
NCAA, Academic Progress Rate (APR). Read on NCAA.org
Both findings can be true at once. Our work helps institutions understand the experience and contribution behind the measures.
A changing landscape
The student-athlete environment continues to evolve.
Revenue sharing
Participating Division I institutions may now share revenue directly with student-athletes, in addition to athletic scholarships and third-party NIL earnings. The revenue sharing cap for the 2026-27 academic year is approximately $21.58 million per school.
College Sports Commission, Revenue sharing. Read on the CSC website
Transfers and degree completion
In May 2026 the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics announced its support for reasonable limits on athlete transfers to promote academic continuity and degree completion. At the same meeting, the Chair of the NCAA Division I Board of Directors connected unlimited transfers unrelated to the pursuit of a degree with the loss of the student-athlete model.
Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics (2026). Knight Commission supports NCAA's proposed age-based, five-year eligibility concept and federal legislation to enforce national eligibility standards. 13 May 2026. Read the release
Tracking graduation
The NCAA Division I Academics and Eligibility Committee has received updates on the Graduation Passport, whose goals include modernizing how student-athlete graduation is tracked and observing how transferring affects graduation.
NCAA (2026). Report of the NCAA Division I Academics and Eligibility Committee. January 2026. Read the report
Precedent
External review has a history in college sport.
NCAA athletics certification, 1993 to 2011
Legislation adopted in 1993 required every active Division I institution to complete an institutional self-study, verified and evaluated through external peer review, at least once every ten years. Academic integrity was one of its primary components. A moratorium was placed on the program by the Division I Board of Directors in April 2011.
NCAA Legislative Services Database, Athletics certification program. View · NCAA (2012). NCAA announces latest Division I certification decisions. Read on NCAA.org
Faculty-led academic oversight
The Drake Group, an organization focused on defending academic integrity in college sport, has proposed that each institution establish an athlete academic oversight committee of tenured faculty, producing an annual audit that compares athlete academic benchmarks with the wider student body.
The Drake Group Education Fund (2019). College presidents choose to enable academic fraud in athletics. Read the article
Status of these references
Recommendation, not endorsement.
None of the organizations cited on this page endorses ISAE, and none is claimed. These sources are cited because they are the reason the work exists, and because every one of them can be checked.
GOALS data is self-reported and was collected between December 2024 and June 2025, largely before revenue sharing began. The NCAA does not attribute the trends above to any single cause, and neither do we.
No quotation, figure or reference appears in our work unless it is traceable to its source. Where the evidence is thin, we record that rather than fill the gap.
Institute for Student-Athlete Excellence
Apply this to your institution.
Tell us what your department is working on and we will set out how we would approach it.
Start a conversationAbout
A specialist practice.
The Institute for Student-Athlete Excellence supports universities and athletics departments in understanding, demonstrating and strengthening the impact of their work with student-athletes.
Our mission
Supporting institutions doing important work for student-athletes.
Student-athletes should be able to pursue education and sport to the best of their ability without having to choose between the two. We have enormous appreciation for the people and institutions working every day to make that possible.
Our role is to help make the impact of that work visible, recognise the contribution behind student-athlete outcomes and support institutions in strengthening that impact further.
Why specialist
One field, understood deeply.
Student-athlete support reaches across departments and across the academic year. Our work focuses entirely on understanding that environment, the experiences it creates and the contribution it makes to outcomes that institutions already care about.
The practice is registered and headquartered in London, where it was founded and where its legal, insurance and professional infrastructure sits. That is a head office rather than a market. Research on the relevant NCAA division, conference, institutional context and eligibility rules is completed before any engagement begins.
People
Who leads the work.
Engagements are led personally by the practice's founding director, who has spent three years researching dual career environments at doctoral level at Loughborough University London, working with athletes including Olympians, Paralympians and international medalists across a range of national systems.
Senior advisers support the practice's methodology and quality review. They are advisers rather than employees, and their role is disclosed at the outset of any engagement.
Governance
The commitments that govern our work.
- Independence is structural. Advisory and review work are separated, with a defined separation period in either direction, and all known conflicts are disclosed in writing before an engagement begins.
- Confidentiality is the default. Findings remain with the institution. We do not publish, do not compare institutions with one another, and name no client without written consent secured after completion.
- Student-athlete input is gathered under informed consent and reported so that no individual is identifiable to the institution.
- Institutional and academic work are kept strictly separate, under a published data provenance statement. Loughborough University is permanently excluded as a client on declared familiarity grounds.
- Every quotation, figure and reference is traceable to its source, and gaps are recorded rather than filled.
- We claim no endorsement, accreditation or affiliation that we do not hold.
- Where an engagement would not serve an institution, we say so before it commits.
Our professional standards note, independence and impartiality policy, ethics, confidentiality and data protection position, privacy notice and data provenance statement are available on request, along with company, insurance and registration details for your procurement team.
Institute for Student-Athlete Excellence
Questions before you engage.
Documentation, references and questions of scope are welcome ahead of any commitment.
Start a conversationContact
Start a conversation.
Tell us what your department is working on. We respond within five business days to arrange a conversation, at no cost and with nothing to sign.
What to expect
The first conversation.
It covers the outcomes you already track, the work your people and programmes are doing, and the impact you would most value understanding. The aim is simply to learn about your institution and explore where independent evidence or additional support could be useful.
Institute for Student-Athlete Excellence
Every conversation concludes with a clear view of your position.
That holds whether or not it leads to an engagement.
Email us directlyEnquiry received
Thank you. Your enquiry has been received.
We will respond within five business days to arrange a conversation. If anything changes in the meantime, or you would prefer to speak sooner, please email us directly.
In the meantime
Further reading.
- Our work, how we help make the impact behind student-athlete outcomes visible.
- The evidence, and the NCAA research behind this work.
- The consultancy practice, and how an engagement runs across the academic year.