mrjames
Professor
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Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-07-05 07:44 PM - Post#1930
In response to
Since this is something that apparently happens annually, I'm just going to post something that I already posted on the issue, because it's reading period I'm actively seeking ways to procrastinate.
In the admissions process there are two major factors which play a role. Financial aid and acceptance. That is, money and open slots. One of these two is relatively limiting, and it's not money.
But the admissions slots have already been set aside. No matter what, you're getting 30 football players, 2-8 basketball players, 8-12 hockey players. Not using the relatively unlimited resource of money to maximize the limited resource of admissions slots is an error in economics.
Offering athletic scholarships is NOT a value judgment. anyone who believes that only need look at the economics of the situation to dispel those qualms. Offering athletic scholarships is a way of recognizing that there is a market for those athletes who are incredibly gifted on the field and in the classroom. You can't ignore the market. Well, actually you can, but you wind up coming no where close to fulfilling your maximum utility.
And that's what's so frustrating. In the end, the Ivy League believes that its superior product is enough to overcome the fact that it takes a passive stance toward intercollegiate athletics. By maintaining this belief they hamstring their athletic programs, primarily because they've adopted a sensationalistic cost/benefit analysis. "If we offer athletic scholarships, we will begin to see the same problems that plague all the other 'bad seeds' in intercollegiate athletics. We'll be perpetuating all that's wrong with the 'semi-pro' college game today." This convenient shelter provides the Presidents with an easy out--easy in the sense that adopting policies that recognize the complexity of maintaining a balance between athletic pursuits and the academic goals of the university is far more difficult than merely denying this and restricting that.
People love to praise the Ivy League for its athletic vision. They love to point to the gluttonous behavior of the mainstream college programs and beam proudly "That'll never be us." Well, I can honestly say that I have absolutely no respect for the athletic policies of the Ivies. None. [Revisionist history note: I believe that this was a bit overstated, but let's just say, I don't have a high level of respect for the way the Ivies treat athletics in general] And on this point at least, the economics and logic of the situation back me up.
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-07-05 08:09 PM - Post#1931
In response to mrjames
The Ivies do not have a policy against athletic scholarships. The policy covers all non-need-based aid.
There are thousands of non-athletes at Ivy schools who could have received merit-based free rides to other universities. They and their parents are willing to pay and/or borrow to attend a great and presigious institution.
I do not think you could change the scholarship policy just for athletes, and if you did, you could not change it just for basketball and a few other sports. A lot more is at stake than whether the basketball coach is able to recruit a few slightly better recruits now and then.
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-07-05 08:14 PM - Post#1932
In response to mrjames
The following is from Jim Donaldson's column in today's Providence Journal.
"In the wake of the tearful resignation of former Brown A.D. Andy Geiger as director of athletics at Ohio State, it's worth recalling that the troubles in Columbus didn't begin with the enrollment of running back Maurice Clarett.
Patriots fans should remember the controversy surrounding the academic credentials -- or lack thereof -- of linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer, a first-round draft pick of New England in 1999 who played just 24 games over three seasons for the Pats before injuries caused him to retire.
On the brink of being declared ineligible for the Buckeyes' 1998 season after recording grade-point averages of 1.72 or lower in five semesters, the "Big Kat" was required to attend summer school, where he took such courses as "Presentational Speaking," in which not one of the 22 students enrolled received lower than an A-minus; "AIDS: What Every College Student Should Know;" and then the truly tough one -- "Golf."
In addition, a failing grade Katzenmoyer had received in the spring of 1998 in a course entitled "Introduction to the Computer and the Visual Arts" was changed to a C-plus.
"Everybody has grades changed," Katzenmoyer told me in an interview at Foxboro in June 1999. "That's part of college." "
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-07-05 08:14 PM - Post#1933
In response to mrjames
Really, many slots are reserved for students with many different talents, including athletics. It's not an issue of slots, especially since there are "slots" for many athletes in non-revenue sports as to whom you are not proposing giving scholarships. What you really are saying is that we can maximize revenue by paying for players in sports where having better teams will increase attendance. That is the "market" to which you refer.
The "market" does not, as we are well aware, make moral value judgements. The "student" who is receiving a scholarship knows that his first obligation is to play ball, not to go to school---indeed, playing ball is what he is being paid for. If he stops playing ball, even if he needs to concentrate on schoolwork, he loses his scholarship, or the school is not getting the return it is paying for. Moreover, as long as we are looking at the market and return, with the exception of the P's, none of the Ivies will truly benefit on the court without major investment in facilities---no team with a 2500 seat high school level gym can compete with the big boys. Why invest in scholarships if it can't significantly improve the quality of the product or improve the school's bottom line.
As long as we're repeating ourselves (and I have consciously avoided the "slippery slope" argument here), scholarships really would only benefit Penn. I don't think Princeton, which recruits differently, would benefit as much and the rest of the league would be hurt on the bottom line. Thus, it will never happen in the Ivy League, and because I (along with Penn's administration) believe that Penn's best interests lie in staying Ivy, it will never happen at Penn.
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-07-05 11:35 PM - Post#1934
In response to
A scholarship isn't a job. It's indentured servitude. And the student receiving the scholarship has as much obligation to go to school as he or she does to play the sport - after all, if they flunk out, they lose the grant just as assuredly as they do if they stop playing.
Is the student athlete (no ironic quote marks, please - if they're registered for classes, they're students) required to report the proceeds of a scholarship to the federal government, and pay income and SS taxes on it?
Does the student athlete have the right of any other "at will" employee or contractor to quit and move to another employer in the same industry at any time he or she wishes - including when the immediate supervisor who offered the scholarship is fired?
Does the student athlete have the right to negotiate a better deal, for more money than his or her peers, based on talent, experience, need, or just good negotiating skills?
Can the student athlete retain a paid advisor (attorney or agent) to perform those negotiations, as other entertainers can?
Is the student athlete allowed to supplement his or her income however he or she sees fit, with other employment in the same field, or with a 2nd or 3rd or 4th job part-time job?
Can the student athlete organize with his peers and bargain collectively for better wages or benefits?
Is the student athlete protected by federal and state labor laws?
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Chip Bayers
Professor
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-08-05 12:16 AM - Post#1935
In response to
You're right that a lot more than basketball recruiting is at stake. It's all well and good to talk in the abstract about families "willing to pay and/or borrow to attend a great and prestigious institution." Unfortunately, fewer and fewer who are willing are actually able, as a recent Economist article explains:
"Three-quarters of the students at the country's top 146 colleges come from the richest socio-economic fourth, compared with just 3% who come from the poorest fourth (the median family income at Harvard, for example, is $150,000). This means that, at an elite university, you are 25 times as likely to run into a rich student as a poor one.
"One reason for this is government money. The main federal programme supporting poorer students is the Pell grant: 90% of such grants go to families with incomes below $41,000. But the federal government has been shifting resources from Pell grants to other forms of aid to higher education. Student loans are unrelated to family resources. Federal tax breaks for higher education benefit the rich. State subsidies for higher education benefit rich and poor alike. At the same time, colleges are increasingly using financial aid to attract talented students away from competitors rather than to help the poor."
"Another reason may be “affirmative action”—programmes designed to help members of racial minorities. These are increasingly used by elite universities, in the belief that race is a reasonable proxy for social disadvantage, which it may not be. Flawed as it may be, however, this kind of affirmative action is much less pernicious than another practised by many universities: 'legacy' preferences, a programme for the children of alumni—as if privileged children were not already doing well enough out of the education system.
"In most Ivy League institutions, the eight supposedly most select universities of the north-east, legacies' make up between 10% and 15% of every class. At Harvard they are over three times more likely to be admitted than others. The students in America's places of higher education are increasingly becoming an oligarchy tempered by racial preferences. This is sad in itself, but even sadder when you consider the extraordinary role that the same universities—particularly Conant's Harvard—played in promoting meritocracy in the first half of the 20th century."
This is why ranting against athletic scholarships is almost besides the point. Our alma maters have a fairness problem right now, in the 21st century, at least compared to the goals they set for themselves in the 20th century, when those of us who are "older" alums matriculated as undergraduates. And yet our athletic programs continue to operate as if nothing has changed.
Address the greater fairness issue, and maybe we don't even need to talk about whether financial grants should be directed specifically to athletes. Princeton's "no loan" policy is a good first step in that direction, but of course one they are more capable of implementing than some of the other schools in the league.
[I've edited this to include a link to that Economist survey:]
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560
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Big R&B Truth
Masters Student
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Reg: 11-23-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-08-05 02:33 AM - Post#1936
In response to Chip Bayers
Quote:
"In most Ivy League institutions, the eight supposedly most select universities of the north-east, legacies' make up between 10% and 15% of every class. At Harvard they are over three times more likely to be admitted than others. The students in America's places of higher education are increasingly becoming an oligarchy tempered by racial preferences. This is sad in itself, but even sadder when you consider the extraordinary role that the same universities—particularly Conant's Harvard—played in promoting meritocracy in the first half of the 20th century."
The notion that Ivy League Universities are becoming more of a refuge of the rich and privileged then 100 years ago is laughable at best. The Ivies have always been a haven for the rich. Even worse, until the second half of the twentieth century, many Ivies restricted the entry of members of the “wrong ethnic groups”.
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Big R&B Truth
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-08-05 03:13 AM - Post#1937
In response to
Quote:
The following is from Jim Donaldson's column in today's Providence Journal.
"In the wake of the tearful resignation of former Brown A.D. Andy Geiger as director of athletics at Ohio State, it's worth recalling that the troubles in Columbus didn't begin with the enrollment of running back Maurice Clarett.
Patriots fans should remember the controversy surrounding the academic credentials -- or lack thereof -- of linebacker Andy Katzenmoyer, a first-round draft pick of New England in 1999 who played just 24 games over three seasons for the Pats before injuries caused him to retire.
On the brink of being declared ineligible for the Buckeyes' 1998 season after recording grade-point averages of 1.72 or lower in five semesters, the "Big Kat" was required to attend summer school, where he took such courses as "Presentational Speaking," in which not one of the 22 students enrolled received lower than an A-minus; "AIDS: What Every College Student Should Know;" and then the truly tough one -- "Golf."
In addition, a failing grade Katzenmoyer had received in the spring of 1998 in a course entitled "Introduction to the Computer and the Visual Arts" was changed to a C-plus.
"Everybody has grades changed," Katzenmoyer told me in an interview at Foxboro in June 1999. "That's part of college." "
There is a difference between Katzenmyer and Clarett. Katzemyer played for John Cooper, who was hired before Geiger became AD. Geiger allegedly fired Cooper because of incidences such as this. In reality, if Cooper could beat Michigan he would still be Coach. Never the less there were many cases much worse then Katzemyer. I was at Ohio State during the late 80s and early 90s before Geiger was AD, and I taught undergraduate classes there. I have this one vivid memory of walking by a dorm where one of the members of the football team was showing off this really nice new sports car off to his friends. Perhaps the guy had rich folks or something, but it really made me wonder where he got that car from.
Geiger brought in Jim Tressell to supposedly clean up Cooper’s mess. Clarett was Tressell’s recruit. Still nothing seems to have changed except that Tressell has a job for life because of a national championship and a winning record against Michigan.
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-08-05 02:38 PM - Post#1938
In response to Big R&B Truth
You're right, insofar as your strawman goes. But the article itself doesn't go so far as to claim that the Ivy League schools are more of a refuge for the rich than they were in 1905. It merely argues that the schools are now betraying the meritocratic ideal of Conant, which wasn't fully adopted at most of them until the 1960s.
Conant's quest didn't even begin until the 1930s, and, flawed as it was because of his decision to use the SAT as his main tool for replacing the aristocratic elite with an intellectual one, it did lead to the removal of those racial, ethnic, and religious quotas.
Nicholas Lemann's book The Big Test provides a useful history of this, even if you don't agree with all of his conclusions. The Economist article appears to draw heavily on one of his arguments: that as soon as they started to make money, the meritocratic elite of the 60s and 70s began to act like the old aristocracy, gaming the admissions process to favor their kids. Which is how you end up at Harvard with legacies 3X more likely to get in today than non-legacies.
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Big R&B Truth
Masters Student
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-10-05 03:38 AM - Post#1939
In response to Chip Bayers
Here is why I find this rant against Ivies giving preferred admission to children of alumni silly. According to the article's statistics, 85 to 90% of each incoming class consists of non legacy students. So it’s hard to argue that other people aren’t being denied access. But here is the more important point. Throughout the entire world, human activities are influenced by familial, tribal or clan ties. Being a member of certain group helps, whether it is getting a position in law firm, obtaining a union card or obtaining better terms in a livestock trade. Alumni organizations are not that much different from tribal groups in other parts of the world. So why is it not so surprising that Universities give preferences to members of these groups? The affordability of higher education is the real problem, but this is also true with health care, housing (in certain areas of the country) and many other things. Still after 25 years of the republican revolution, why is anyone surprised that this happened?
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-10-05 03:19 PM - Post#1940
In response to Big R&B Truth
No one's ranting about legacies. They're ranting about the larger problem, of which legacies are only a symptom.
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-10-05 06:03 PM - Post#1941
In response to Chip Bayers
Do you have any statistics to back up your hypothesis that there is a larger percentage of legacy admissions at Ivy institutions now than either in the 1940s or 1960s, when you suggest the "meritocracy" period was at its height?
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-10-05 07:57 PM - Post#1942
In response to
It's not "my hypothesis," it's The Economist's, channeling Lehmann.
And their hypothesis isn't about legacies, but about who has access to the elite schools these days, including the Ivies. Legacy admits are cited as but one piece of evidence.
I don't personally have at my fingertips complete admissions stats over the years for the various schools. But just to illustrate with some data found on the Web in a quick search: according to an article in the Yale Alumni magazine, Yale, which started the meritocratic process later than some of the other schools (after Kingman Brewster became president) admitted 53% of all legacy applicants in 1961. By 1970, that number had dropped to 37% - still higher than the overall admit rate, but a significant change nonetheless. As a result, the share of the freshman class made up of legacies dropped from 24% to 12% in less than a decade's time.
Remember that the overall admit rate in the Ivies through the early-mid 1980s, when applications exploded, was significantly higher than it is today. In 1980, for example, Yale admitted 26% of all applicants; last year it was 11.4%. At Harvard last year it was under 10%.
So if legacies at Harvard are now getting in at up to a 40% rate, as The Economist suggests, it appears that the "legacy gap" - the difference between general admissions and legacy admissions - is significantly greater than it was during the meritocratic peak years.
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-10-05 08:26 PM - Post#1943
In response to Chip Bayers
Even if that 40% number is true, and I have no idea whether it is, I'm not sure that it is meaningful. Isn't it logical to assume that children of Harvard grads are both more likely to have superior intelligence and an educational background which is more likely to result in acceptance to a school like Harvard than someone in the general population? I'm always dubious about this line of thinking (yes, I read the Economist too) because it takes everything in the abstract. Are these legacy admits kids who are getting turned down at other Ivies while being accepted to Harvard? That clearly was the case in the old days...I'm not sure it is now. I think now the status as legacy gets you in when you are in that great pool of qualified, but there are many with similar qualifications. I think that it is within the realm of acceptable discretion for colleges to give the nod, all other things being equal, to a legacy. I certainly don't see it as evidence of general unfairness, which you somehow use to justify your argument that there should be special admissions and special scholarships for athletes since the Ivies are unfair to begin with (which, of course, was the original topic of this thread).
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-10-05 11:06 PM - Post#1944
In response to
There already are special admissions for athletes - so special, in fact, that Bowen felt compelled to produce an entire study complaining about them.
And I certainly don't think it's logical - in fact, I think it's naive - to assume that the children of Harvard graduates are likely to be smarter than the average applicant.
The point about the legacy admits - when understood in context with the other evidence, like the financial data - is that (as Lehmann suggests) your prototypical Harvard graduates (along with most of us here on this board) are part of a rather narrow upper middle class and upper class socieconomic group, an educated elite which has a particularly sophisticated insiders' understanding of how admissions and financial aid works today in the Ivy League and its peer group of schools - and how to take advantage of that knowledge.
It's not that the parents who went to Harvard are so smart. It's that the parents who went to Harvard are much more likely to know which suburban towns to move to if they want their kid to have the best chance to go Ivy, or which prep schools to send them to if they need to do a year of postgrad. Or to know that if you spend enough money and time, you can manipulate SAT scores through test prep [scores that are already skewed through cultural bias]. Or to know how to beat the financial aid system by hiding college savings, so that they can lessen loan burdens in advance, in an era when loans make up a huge piece of the aid package for anyone who isn't dirt poor. There are other examples, but you get the point.
This is all a fairly recent development - the influence of test prep and the changes in fin aid are less than a generation old - but as a result, whether you're an athlete or not, if you don't come from a background which has an innate understanding of this process (one shared by all your peers and all your peers' parents), you're at an immediate disadvantage in admissions and Ivy affordability.
Thus Lehmann's argument (now echoed by the Economist) that the old aristocracy which once ruled the Ivies - right families, right schools - has been replaced by a new one which also excludes unfairly. Not with racial and ethnic quotas, but with more opaque barriers, which are nearly invisible if you don't come from that educated elite. But they're just as insidious, especially if you believe (as James Conant or Kingman Brewster did) in the ideals of the Ivy founders: namely, that the role of these colleges should be to identify the very best to develop into the nation's, and the world's, future leaders. Not just the best from a particular subgroup.
Now, why are we talking about athletic aid in this context? Because [I believe] there is less and less of a correlation between interest/achievement in athletics and that more narrow socioeconomic background from which we're drawing the bulk of our general student population. If you're looking for a good high school athlete who is also smart, and he doesn't have the right parents or attend the right high school, he's got multiple disadvantages in admissions that weren't present even 25 years ago. Combine that with the increasing sophistication of major college sports recruiting, which makes it harder and harder to find the diamonds in the rough the Ivies used to find, and our coaches' recruiting process has had to become painfully attenuated in just few short years. And yet in basketball, we're still pretending to compete at the same level as we were 25 years ago, while using ever-more restrictive recruiting rules like the AI. Which, as far as I can tell, appears to accentuate the socioeconomic disparities in the general admissions process (by emphasizing even more the role of the flawed SAT, for example).
As I said in a previous post, take steps to correct the unfairness in admissions and affordability for the entire student population, and you've implicity helped athletics. Another possible course would be the development of grants available to all students who enrich campus life, and dedicate a portion of those to student athletes.
I'd like to see our League be able to produce multiple successors to Bill Bradley, great athletes who are also great citizens and great role models. But I think in our misplaced elitism we've painted ourselves into a corner, with a system where the probability of that happening appears less and less likely every year.
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Anonymous
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-11-05 01:22 PM - Post#1945
In response to Chip Bayers
Come on....your theory (forgive me for using the term "hypothesis") is that because (as an example) Harvard grad parents have knowledge of financial maneuverings, test taking skills, and where to live, they have a great and unfair advantage over the great unwashed in getting into Harvard (before you go nuts, I fully understand that "great unwashed" is my term and not yours). You call me naive---I call you paternalistic and reaking of p.c. thinking (this coming from an unabashed liberal). How can you say with a straight face that 99% of the applicants applying to get into Harvard don't have precisely the same knowledge of financial, educational and test taking maneuvering that the legacy children have? That basic assumption in your posts comes out of thin air. Frankly, admissions offices bend over backward to admit those who do NOT come from the backgrounds you describe. The students who may be prejudiced by legacy admissions aren't the poor kids who are the first from their families to go to college---rather, they are the kids who might be legacies at Penn and Brown. As I said before, and it is a point you ignored, the legacy admissions don't admit unqualified students. Rather, in this day and age, where there is a great pool of similarly qualified students, the legacy will get the nod. Of all the things that you mention that are wrong with college admissions and athletics, I think legacy admissions are an angstrom among miles.
I'm all for getting rid of the AI. What do you suggest in its place to ensure that there won't be gross academic cheating? Because without restrictions, there will be admissions of athletes who simply cannot do the work at an Ivy institution. If you include athletic grants in aid, that will only exacerbate the pressure to admit athletes who can help the bottom line.
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light blue heavy
maximus
Posts: 164
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-11-05 02:58 PM - Post#1946
In response to
For a more interesting and more in depth discussion of test prep and the SAT (I mean, there is actual evidence in this) I would refer you to Malcolm Gladwell's sketch of the life of Stanley Kaplan (of Kaplan test prep, which stretches back to the 50's).
http://www.gladwell.com/2001/2001_12_17_a_kaplan.htm
Though I am interested in hearing how a conversation of a bunch of Penn supporters focusses on Harvard parents, I will assume it is because many Penn students had a parent that went to Harvard, as I did.
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Chip Bayers
Professor
Posts: 7001
Loc: New York
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-11-05 04:44 PM - Post#1947
In response to light blue heavy
We're referring to Harvard because The Economist referred to Harvard. It's just a proxy for the rest of the "elite" schools, Ivy and non-Ivy alike.
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light blue heavy
maximus
Posts: 164
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-11-05 05:44 PM - Post#1948
In response to Chip Bayers
Chip, thanks for correcting the link: I put a period on the end of the link. Why? I don't know.
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Phil
Freshman
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Loc: Princeton
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: Annual Big Time College Sports Rant
01-12-05 01:32 AM - Post#1949
In response to Chip Bayers
"The rise in legacies is merely an indicator of the bigger problem identified by Lehmann and others, and reiterated here by the Chuckster. Or as I said earlier, a symptom."
But are legacies rising, they certainly aren't at Princeton?
"We're referring to Harvard because The Economist referred to Harvard. It's just a proxy for the rest of the "elite" schools, Ivy and non-Ivy alike."
It may be a proxy but is it representative? For example the Economist article stated that the median family income of Harvard students is $150,000 whereas 50% of Princeton students get financial aid.
Regarding someone's earlier comment about the likelihood of athletes becoming future leaders a la Bradley I think the situation is better than he fears. Of the athletes I have either taught or coached several are showing promise in this regard so if that's representative then things are hopeful. Some examples from the last few years include two working at the White House, one working in the Edwards campaign, one helped found a missionary school in the poor area of Nairobi (while still a student!), one is a trustee of Princeton University.
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