There were strong results for Oregon State in the latest Department of Education’s Federal Graduation Rates, which were released this week.

However, the football team lagged behind. That was only because of a small sample size, which skews this year’s data.

The Federal Graduation Rates tracked freshmen scholarship athletes from each school for six years entering college in the 1998-99 season. They graduated 62 percent of the time, two points higher than the usual student-body.

OSU’s student population matched the national average, while athletes were higher at 65 percent. Oregon graduated 62 percent of it students, 55 percent of the athletes and 64 percent of the football team.

The OSU football team graduated 43 percent of the seven players tracked in the latest study. That was coach Mike Riley’s second season, so the class was made of mostly junior college transfers, which were not counted in the study.

Last year’s numbers showed 71 percent of the football players graduated, tracking 17 players.

“We strive to be successful in the classroom and on the fields of play,” athletic director Bob De Carolis said on the OSU Web site. “While we feel our numbers are good, we will continue to strive to excel in the classroom and develop future leaders.”

He echoed those sentiments in a meeting with the Corvallis Gazette-Times earlier in the week. De Carolis also said OSU is looking for a director of student-athlete academic services and an additional academic counselor for the football team to aid in improvement.

Both of OSU’s basketball teams graduated 50 percent in the federal numbers. The baseball team is at 22 percent because of players leaving for the pros.

De Carolis is among many who don’t favor this way of charting academic success since it doesn’t take into account transfers, and still penalizes schools when people leave and finish elsewhere.

The NCAA recently developed its own Graduation Success Rate method to give a better reading of what’s happening with transfers and players who turn pro in good academic standing.

OSU has a 73 percent graduation rate in that measure, with the football team at 53 percent, from the information released in December. Those numbers rank the Beavers in the middle of the Pacific-10 Conference.

Five other OSU teams were in the conference lead or shared the lead when looking at the Graduation Success Rate.

Both models will continue to be used by the NCAA because the Graduation Success Rate is not compared to the general student population nor does it study the success of ethnic groups like the federal method.