DESTIN, Fla. -- SEC residents have given league commissioner Mike Slive power to rule prospective student-athletes ineligible for competition in the league if there are academic irregularities in their transcripts.

The league is responding to news reports in recent months revealing schools that are basically diploma mills or degree factories, with bogus academic credits designed to get incoming freshman signees academically eligible.

In the new SEC academic review process passed by the presidents and chancellors of the league's 12 schools on the final day of the conference's annual business meetings, each school will review transcripts of any signee that send up red flags. That report will be sent to that school's chancellor or president, who will make a recommendation to Slive about the enrollment and eligibility status.

But it's Slive who will have the final word.

"We want to ensure the athletes that come to SEC have been adequately and properly prepared to do the rigors of academic work in college and succeed," Slive said. "We'll have our own way of dealing with this matter, and we hope the problem is far and few between."

Last November, the New York Times and Washington Post both published articles on the questionable high schools. The biggest offender was a Florida high school called University High, an unaccredited school in an office building that offered diplomas for $399 in four to six weeks. Athletes acknowledged they did little or no work.

The Times listed 11 Division 1-A football programs that had signed University High graduates, and three of them -- Auburn, Florida and Tennessee -- are in the SEC.

The SEC immediately asked the NCAA to begin investigating those high schools that provided questionable credits and diplomas.

Tennessee signee Gerald Williams took at least one course at University High. Williams, who didn't make it through the NCAA Clearinghouse, re-signed with the Vols in February.

Slive said the NCAA sent 50 such schools questionnaires to obtain more information. If more information is needed, Slive said the NCAA has teams of investigators who are in the process of making surprise on-site visits to the schools in question to determine their academic validity.

In the meantime, the SEC decided to take the lead with the legislation it passed Friday. Several athletes already in the SEC who obtained degrees or credits from such schools won't be affected.

But from this point, the league is dropping the hammer on the so-called "instant" degrees.

Georgia President Michael Adams, president of the SEC, said he's comfortable with the review process that involves Slive and each SEC school.

"It allows the commissioner to exercise good judgment protecting the integrity of the competitive process, and would require each institution to make its own determination about enrollment issues," Adams said.

Adams said that any academic fraud is serious, but he didn't believe there were a lot of cases in the SEC to be concerned about. He said some schools in the league had previously determined not to sign athletes with degrees from the questionable high schools, and other SEC schools have accepted such athletes.

"There have been three or four instances in this conference that several people determined needed a second look at test score reliability or transcript reliability," Adams said. "We're not dealing with something that pervasive."

The NCAA is also trying to nip the problem in the bud.

It is set to release its first list of high schools that the organization believes aren't academically legitimate, meaning NCAA schools can't sign players and accept transcripts from the school in question. Most of the schools on the list are expected to be ones that were created around basketball teams.

Ole Miss athletic director Pete Boone said unquestioned academic entrance standards have to be maintained for schools to keep up with the NCAA's Academic Progress rate that penalizes schools scholarships for not graduating players.

"It's like pay me now, or pay me later," Boone said. "If people aren't prepared to get into collegiate academics, they aren't going to graduate. If they don't graduate, the schools are penalized for that. So it makes a lot of sense to eliminate any high school that doesn't have the academic sustenance that a student-athlete will need in college."

Georgia athletic director Damon Evans said his school has scrutinized transcripts closer and closer the last five years.

"A lot of the things we're doing now (the new academic review policy) in the conference is something we've already been doing at the University of Georgia," Evans said. "That's why certain athletes haven't attended Georgia, and that's because we want to maintain academic integrity."

Slive said that there are many things on a high school transcript that will send up red flags leading to a more intense review.

Some examples are ACT or SAT scores that increase dramatically between re-tests; athletes who attend multiple high schools; athletes who withdraw or transfer from their high school late in their senior season; athletes who take an abundance of core courses as a senior; athletes who take sequential courses in the same academic year (such as Algebra 1, II and III as a senior); athletes with revised transcripts; and athletes who complete core coursework through correspondence courses or virtual high schools.

"I think ultimately we'll see NCAA legislation on this issue in line with ours," Adams said. "I feel there's a more aggressive stance in the conference to deal with these issues that might not have occurred at other times.

"Our commissioner has created a climate where integrity and credibility are very important."