Originally Posted by
Nick
Then why are athletes given preferential treatment in admissions? I can understand football / basketball athletes, as those are revenue generators. But why are athletes in minor sports given a break on admissions?
Under the heading of "that's the way it is," consider this:
November 1958: At inaugural ceremonies for the University of Washington’s new president, Charles E. Odegaard, President Clark Kerr of the University of California last week offered some of the green fruit of his experience: “I find that the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students, athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.”
(a) Every college in the country that competes in athletics wants to be successful: this means ensuring that there are competitive ath-a-letes admitted in every sport.
(b) If no one played the admission-preference game, then there could be a random distribution of talented athletes across the colleges, but, in fact, there is competition for athletes in every sport at every level.
(c) Consider the U. of Chicago, the first major university to abandon big-time athletics -- it dropped out of the Big Ten in 1946 after abolishing football in 1939. It prides itself today as offering no advantages in admissions for any athlete. But as detailed in the NY Times Mag a while ago -- the coaches can take the application of any football recruit to the admissions office and get an immediate decision on admission. Uhhh,... that's an advantage.
(d) I had a friend take his large and mobile son to interview at a small but prestigious New England college with Division III athletics. The football coach urged the son to take the SAT's again (his scores were already pretty good). "I get only three exceptions in football [from admissions], and I am not wasting one on a tackle."
(e) I had another friend's son go to an admissions session at an Ivy League school that was all or mostly prospective athletic recruits. An inexperienced admissions counselor came in and stupidly said, "The only reason you are being seriously considered for admission is that you are athletes." The kid was so mad he was spitting and went elsewhere.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013