Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values (review)

Those writing on intercollegiate athletics are commonly most troubled by what they argue are the increasingly commercial and professional nature of spectator sports. In Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values, William G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin concentrate on the very different question of the institutional costs associated with an overabundance of recruited athletes at the most selective American higher education institutions.

Bowen and Levin explore the challenges associated with preferences in admissions for these athletes at 33 elite institutions: the eight universities in the Ivy League; the 11 members of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC); a selection of larger private institutions such as Carnegie-Mellon and Chicago, "seven sisters" women's colleges, and co-ed liberal arts colleges.

At the universities in the Big Ten or Southeastern Conference, athletes comprise only a few percent of the overall undergraduate population. At the NESCAC institutions, an average of 43% of men enrolled compete in varsity athletics and 32% of women, with 13 teams for each. In the Ivy League, on average, 24% of men and 19% of women are athletes. These are striking numbers.

Bowen and Levin are rightly concerned with how having such a high percentage of athletes shapes institutional culture at these universities and colleges. They make a powerful quantitative case for the proposition they set out to demonstrate: that our most selective institutions have too many recruited athletes. The persuasiveness of their argument, however, is limited by an overly constrained conception of educational values. For Bowen and Levin, only what can be quantified on academic transcripts matters, and the collegiate aspects of institutional life are irrelevant.

Reclaiming the Game draws on the College and Beyond database maintained by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Bowen and Levin are explicit not just in stating the problem, but also in its solution, contending that only presidents working in combination and using solid quantitative data can blunt the resistance to change posed by those in athletics and certain trustees and alumni.

Bowen and Levin make a compelling case that recruiting athletes has intensified at the institutions they study. Coaches use "tags" to indicate to admissions officers their preferences for athletes to fill specialized roles on teams (e.g., a softball catcher or football running back). Institutions thus effectively reserve a significant proportion of slots in each entering class for recruited athletes. These students not only have a considerable advantage in the admissions process and enter with lower admissions numbers, but also cluster in certain types of majors, particularly those in professional fields. They also do less well academically.

Bowen and Levin further argue in a careful manner that poorer academic performance is not a factor of athletes having greater time commitments but rather is due to less stringent selection criteria. They also attempt the more difficult and ultimately less satisfying task of quantifying the impact of athletes and athletics on campus ethos and student culture. The authors, furthermore, explore the reasons for the trends they examine, such as coaches becoming ever more professional and leading institutions becoming ever more selective.

Bowen and Levin deserve credit for not equivocating in stating their bold conclusion that recruited athletes are less deserving of seats in the most selective universities and colleges because of their more limited academic accomplishments in high school and their less impressive academic performance on campus. But theirs is a cramped view of educational values.

At our most selective institutions, admission is based not only on academic achievement but also on compelling evidence of less tangible factors. In shaping the interests, experiences, and outcomes of students, the collegiate aspects of institutional life matter—especially at the highly selective institutions that offer the most robust extracurriculum available in American higher education. But collegiate life is difficult, perhaps impossible, to quantify satisfactorily. In this work, Bowen and Levin effectively omit it in framing questions, analyzing findings, and drawing conclusions.

Were Bowen...