University of Hawaii athletes are doing better in the classroom — the ones who manage to stick around, that is.

The Academic Progress Rate scores for UH, announced Wednesday by the NCAA, suggest a turnover in athletes is the biggest barrier to the athletic department reaching its avowed goal of breaking into the top 50 percent of Division I institutions in the APR.

UH’s overall score for its 18 teams was 968, just below the national average of 976. A perfect score is 1,000 and 930 is the minimum before sanctions can be imposed.

Five UH teams — football (962), men’s golf (984), cross country (985), soccer (983) and women’s swimming and diving (989) — matched or bettered the national multi-year averages in their sports. Four teams — men’s golf, cross country, women’s tennis and water polo — posted perfect single-year scores.

The two key components of the APR are retention and eligibility and UH was docked 30 points for retention and 19 for eligibility in the latest NCAA study (2012-13).

Under the NCAA formula, a point is deducted for each player who is academically ineligible at semester’s end or who departs the school with less than a 2.6 grade-point average without graduating. Players who were both ineligible and exited count as a double whammy.

No points are deducted for athletes who were in good standing when they left for the pros or had achieved a 2.6 GPA and transferred to another university. Bonus points can be earned for players who return from ineligibility to graduate.

In the eight years since then-interim UH chancellor Denise Konan set the goal of an upper half standing in Division I, UH has narrowed the gap from as many as 15 points and no longer has any of its teams facing loss of scholarships or postseason sanctions.

But while the number of players leaving is no longer what it was eight years ago, the number of points deducted for lack of retention is at its second-highest point in seven years.

The impact is felt not only on the courts and fields, but financially and academically.

"We still lose more points for retention than we do for eligibility, so this is probably as much about homesickness as it is about academic performance," said Peter Nicholson, a professor in the English department and faculty athletic representative.

Homesickness, playing time and friction with coaches are three of the often-cited reasons for players leaving.

"(Students) go for a lot of reasons," Nicholson said. "I think there are probably 30 different stories why these students chose to go somewhere else."

"That’s one of the things that I have asked Peter to look at," athletic director Ben Jay said. "I want to see if there is something we need to pay attention to with the way the numbers have been the last few years. I want to look at these (numbers) individually, by sport, to see what’s happened with some of these student-athletes."

And how to slow down the revolving door at Manoa.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.