OT: CNN Article - Athletes have an advantage in Admission: Supreme Court decision on AA
I came across an interesting article on CNN regarding the recent Supreme Court decision on Affirmative Action. The article (which is not paywalled, and link is provided below) notes that prospective athletes are called out as a group that receives noted consideration. I found the article interesting.
Both my children are students at Michigan - which, as an alum, makes me very happy. Neither are Michigan athletes, however - both were impacted by athletics. One was recruited by highly regarded academic institutions, and the other was not granted admission because an athlete was provided a scholarship instead.
Two statements in the article that surprised me were:
- Harvard University has more student athletes than Michigan (Harvard with 1,191 to Michigan's 886), and
- At "smaller" schools (Ivies, "Highly Selective Admission" D3 schools) student athletes represent about 20% of the student body.
This isn't intended to be a political discussion, rather - the impact of athletics in college. Since I enrolled at Michigan - many years ago - my preference has been toward collegiate athletics over professional sports.
Any perspectives - or thoughts to share?
Here's the link: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/09/opinions/college-admissions-elite-sports-harvard-affirmative-action-macintosh/index.html
Keep in mind that in Michigan the issue of race based college admissions was outlawed by the voters a few years ago and so the SCOTUS decision really has no affect on Michigan schools.
That being said I think we should look at affirmative action in a different way. The reason black kids can't get into elite universities at the hoped for numbers is because so many of the attend schools that don't prepare them to do so. If Michigan admits 7000 freshman a year and would like 700 (10%) black kids, race favoritism would help only about 350 kids (assuming 350 could get in anyway). That's 350 black kids out of about 100,000 black kids in school in Michigan. So race based affirmative action does not help 99,650 black kids.
We should be focusing our affirmative action efforts (and $$) on improving the schools so that all of the minority kids that need help get it, not just a few hundred.
D’oh
Admission departments have an impossible job today. 44% of high school students have an A or A- average. Half of kids don’t submit SAT/ACTs anymore. The vast majority of kids have similar extracurriculars - played sports but weren’t exceptional, participated in school clubs or student government, did some volunteering. This means that every elite school is getting thousands or tens of thousands of applicants who look indistinguishable on paper. So it’s perfectly sensible to me that when an admissions officer comes across someone who stands out in some way - and being an exceptional athlete is definitely one way — that person is going to get in over the rest of the crowd.
I think you have hit on a major factor in the problem. Grade inflation has reached mind boggling proportions.
I am very old and the new HS I attended was in a new suburban area. The middle class/upper middle parents expected their kids to study and do well. The great majority of the students attended college (many highly regarded academic institutions - including Ivy league).
And yet, not a single person graduated with a 4.0 average. It was regarded as virtually unattainable. Also, the standardized tests ACT, SAT, LSAT, ... have all (as a far as I know) been adjusted (at least once) so that the same raw achievement level receives a higher test score. (And I just checked - despite the inflated standard test scores, they are still declining.)
Avid reader but logged in for the first time in maybe a decade or at least five years or so b/c of this post.
OP - you seem to discredit athletics as if that should not be a criteria. At the end of the day all "elite" institutions care about their rankings from the media sources we all know (US News, Forbes, etc.). A large component of those rankings are predicated on post-grad opportunities for new grads. Particularly at Ivies and elite D3 institutions, admissions staffs work with their career offices to figure out what employers want and make sure they hit the baseline with admissions so every graduating class has at least a couple kids headed to a wide array of elite firms such as Goldman Sachs, KKR, Google, Apple, Blackstone, etc. At these firms, many of the top performers are former athletes because the attributes it takes to be a good athlete translates into success in the workforce. Thus, elite firms want athletes, and thus elite institutions want many athletes (i.e. Harvard so many sports, as with many other Ivies). As as Wharton grad, I review resumes from Penn and I specifically look for athletics on resumes b/c athletes tend to do very well for our team (assuming they also have strong academic creds). Lastly, I'd argue athletics are the best predicator for success of all the "entertainment" talents. I'm writing this on the toilet so apologies for the bad grammar and run-on nature of the post,
Does giving preference to former college athletes in hiring an action against those with physical disadvantage, those who were born with heart problems, motor skill developmental delays, etc?
Ivy, I’m not discrediting collegiate athletics at all. In my case, it was a factor that differentiated two qualified students who applied to a highly selective university.
My children were very active in athletics.. and academics. And, lol, they saw a lot of the country as they competed in their sports - whereas academic events were usually at one of our state’s universities.
There are many benefits learned from competition - and, athletics provides an opportunity to not only participate, but also develop leadership abilities.
Long comment about to come, so the tldr version is - athletes earned their spot. For SURE at the Michigans of the world, and Stanford too. Shakier ground at the Ivies but I still think they deserve their spots. Legacy admits are who the real ire should be directed at.
D3 schools don't give out athletic scholarships - and while Ivies may technically not give out scholarships for athletics, they compete at a D1 level across all sports, so I don't think the two are relev as not comparisons.
At a school like Michigan - large, public - scholarship athletes deserve a spot for sure. They enrich our experience, work at least as hard as non-athletes to be here, and are, whether admitted or not, training to be professional athletes or Olympians.
I didn't go to an Ivy so I can't really say much on the dynamic on campus there. In general, a lot of Ivy League athletes are excellent - some even go pro of go to the Olympics, I'm sure most have similar dreams. While not an Ivy, Stanford is a private school with similar admissions and does produce a number of champions, Olympians, and professionals. Where it grates many is that athletes, and legacy admissions, are a large portion of the incoming class at those selective schools. And athletes tend to be whiter than the general student population - at the Ivy leagues, this is even true for football.
At Stanford, athletes clearly pursue and achieve excellence. In my mind, they've justified their admission. At the Ivies, where the athletes aren't as successful, I think the argument is perhaps mor salient. I still think they work their butts off to be there, and are likely to have future success. Yes, outside of football, basketball and track, elite athletes tend to be more affluent than the average American. But they still have to show incredible discipline and drive to earn a spot, which I think is tantamount to the amount of dedication a more academically inclined high schooler has to show.
They're often lumped together with legacy admits, who are a large proportion of richer, whiter students who did not have to show such drive, dedication and effort to earn their spot. Not to say they were failures, but they definitely had a considerably easier path to the ivy leagues than literally everyone else at their schools.
What you say is true - I think it's automatically assumed that an athlete would not have gotten in without the coach's help when that is not always the case. Many of them are academically talented as well and they make great contributions to the college experience.
But let's be real: some athletes provide much more value to the university than others. And making exceptions for them is less of a problem. It's interesting that Michigan football is importing guys like Drake Nugent, Myles Hinton and LaDarius Henderson - all really smart dudes with strong academic backgrounds who would probably get in easily anyway - while some of the basketball team's recruits and transfers are getting straight up denied. But, generally, I can see how the university would make greater exceptions for football and basketball players because those sports require incredible and rare athletic talent and physiques. So it wouldn't be the worst thing for them to take a kid who is a bit of a reach. But it seems like Michigan typically gets talented recruits who are also great students as well. And of course, they bring in a lot of money for the schools.
But, beyond football and basketball, it's hard to argue that many other sports provide that kind of value. And if Ivies are greatly lowering their standards to admit fencers, xcountry runners, golfers, rowers, whoever, I think that creates a problem. I think it diminishes the reputation of the school and the accomplishments of the other students. If a kid is a great athlete in those nonrev sports but is a mediocre or just OK student, they probably should not be admitted to those schools.
It seems that all these people complaining about affirmative action should also be complaining about descendants of alumni getting a boost in their application process. I'm not hearing the same outrage.
One of Gorsoch's main argument's against using race as a factor for AA was that the universities (Harvard and UNC) gave preference to legacy and athletes, with the latter predominantly from wealthy families with resource for training. KBJ complained about legacy too and argued that race-based affirmative action is a counter balance. It was written on the wall that if race based AA were to be struck down, legacy and athletes preference will be target from both left and right.
I heard a talking head on one of the news channels say that was an interesting take on legacies considering that some students' parents and grandparents were literally not permitted to go to some schools (it looks like UNC didn't desegregate until the 1960s and I'm sure there are more than a handful of white students who were multigenerational legacies).
This article notes that athletes make up only 2-3% of all students on campus at larger public schools, so this feels trivially irrelevant as a concern.
Also, that's an opinion piece that doesn't seem to have correct information. For example, Harvard itself claims it has 42 varsity teams and UM has 30, not 37 and 27 as listed here. As for their facts about the number of varsity athletes, it's a link to a Google Sheets page that says it's from an EADA survey. I'm sure the numbers are close but here's a Crimson article where they give better info than a sheet.
Yes, Harvard has 12 more varsity programs so it makes sense they have more athletes. And I'm sure that benefits some people who would struggle otherwise to be admitted. But even in the report linked here you'll notice that lineage/legacy kids get a far greater advantage than even athletes (259 were admitted vs. 180 for athletes in the year profiled), and if you factor out legacy admissions as a booster the percentage of those kids who got in drops by 60%, more than the 51% for athletes. So if anyone really wants to deal with the perceived lack of access to elite schools, maybe we should focus on these failsons and faildaughters who get in because their parents write some checks and know some people on the admission boards.
The 2nd number doesn't surprise me at all. Harvard having more student athletes than Michigan is a bit surprising, but it could be explained that they don't offer athletic scholarships
While doing away with AA and diversity in admissions they should also throw away legacy advantages.
Except they didn’t do away with diversity. Roberts explicitly provided a roadmap for universities to include diversity as a factor:
Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.
I object to legacy leg ups. Seems to me this practice totally goes against merit based admissions.
Even with legacy admissions, I suggest that the answer is, “that depends.” How much weight is a university putting on legacy status? If it’s just a tie-breaker, I’m OK with that based on my assumption that a legacy is more likely to accept admission and already has a basic understanding of the university culture. I suspect that legacies may be more likely to complete their degree. My neighbor’s kid went to an out-of-state university that he had almost zero familiarity with. He hated it and isn’t going back.
Looking at another aspect of merit based admissions, does that mean you are in favor of eliminating the preference for in-state students? I think there is value to a state school educating in-state students who are probably more likely to stay in-state after graduation and help the state economy.
Lastly, if I was a top student, and the other top students were all like me, I would have missed out on learning about the experiences of students from all over the world. I know what I know. I know what I think. The college experience was so much more valuable to me because President Duderstadt emphasized diversity. Not racial quotas, but diversity. That entailed outreach to underrepresented communities, and cost the university money, but overall, the net effect was way more positive than negative.
ST3 Perhaps there should be a preference category for AA and a separate one for international diversity. I honestly don't believe it was intended for both categories to be viewed as one in the same. That way the Asian kid with stellar grades and test scores isn't competing for slots already determined to be a part of the schools initiative and commitment to AA. Historically discriminated against groups won't have to worry that the son of a rich Saudi oil baron has taken a spot slated for a poor/middle class Native American.
You lost me at CNN
Crappy News Network
Lowest rated Cable News Network I believe. They’re a dumpster fire.