Men’s Transfers Dropping Significantly, Women’s Rising in NCAA

Transfer rate among male volleyball players in the NCAA has been cut almost in half since 2004, while women’s transfers have actually risen.

That’s the upshot of new NCAA data published last week in a handy Tableau Viz that shows transfer rates in a series of interactive graphs. You can check out the full data here, but we’ve pulled out some of the bigger headlines specific to men’s and women’s volleyball below:

The data is broken down into three categories. 2-4 transfers compile transfers from 2-year schools to 4-year schools. That mainly speaks to junior college and community college transfers. 4-4 transfers (from a 4-year school to another 4-year school) are the ‘parallel’ transfers within the NCAA system. Total transfers include 2-4 and 4-4 transfers.

Men’s Transfers halved, women’s transfers rise since 2004

Here’s a look at the numbers for 2004 (the first year data is included in these reports) and the most recent data, 2016. The transfer rate among male student-athletes in volleyball has dropped significantly for both 2-4 and 4-4 transfers. Meanwhile, less women are transferring from 2-year to 4-year schools now compared to 2004, but the 4-4 rate has actually increased.

Men’s transfers spiked in 2015, dropped in 2016

It’s been a volatile couple of years on the men’s side. Transfer rates dropped pretty steadily from 2004 to 2011, but then jumped back up again for the next few years. In 2015, the transfer rate skyrocketed from 7.8% to 10.7%, but then dropped hugely (6.8%) in 2016. Whether 2016 was an outlier or the start of a new trend remains to be seen.

Women: 2-4 rates down, 4-4 rates up, total rates stable

The women’s data looks, on the surface, very stable. In 2004, 12.1% of female volleyball players had transferred, and in 2016, that number was 12.5%. But that’s a product of 2-4 transfers steadily declining as 4-4 transfers have risen.

4-4 transfers are up from 7.2% in 2004 to 9.0% in 2016, while 2-4 transfers have fallen from 4.9% to 3.4%.

Women’s transfers above average, men’s below

In terms of all NCAA sports, women’s volleyball ranks above women’s sport average in transfer rate, while men’s volleyball is well below the men’s average. Male student-athletes in all sports transfer at a rate of about 10% – men’s volleyball players are well below that at 6.8%. Even when men’s volleyball transfer rates were hovering around 12% in the 2004 era, that rate was only about at the NCAA average among men, which has slowly dropped from about 12% to about 10%.

For women, though, volleyball ranks as one of the sports with the highest transfer rate. Female student-athletes transferred at a rate of 8% on average in 2016, and the volleyball number is 12.4%. For beach volleyball, the number is even higher, at an NCAA-leading 19.2% transfer rate. That’s in part, though, because the total number of athletes involved in beach volleyball (276 according to these data) is much smaller than most other sports, giving a few transfers a much higher impact on the overall percentage.

Beach volleyball has the highest transfer rate for women’s sports in 2016, followed by basketball, tennis, volleyball and soccer. Conversely, men’s volleyball has one of the lowest transfer rates compared to other sports. Fencing is lowest, followed by gymnastics, co-ed rifle, lacrosse and swimming & diving, then volleyball and wrestling.