<p>The Ivies are beginning to see the escalation of a trend that strikes me as unhealthy. It is happening because "everybody is doing it." </p>
<p>What is "it"?</p>
<p>It is the salting rosters with transfers from community colleges and "lesser" Div I and Div III schools.</p>
<p>I don't think there is a single Ivy football squad, for example, without at least 1 transfer; some schools (read Penn) have had as many as 10 transfers on the squad in recent years.</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale and Cornell - for sure - have been filling "needs" in the skill positions by scanning the waiver wire and plugging in this new category of recruit where necessary and convenient.</p>
<p>Of course many football powers - particularly in the South and West - have been fleshing out their rosters with "juco" transfers for years, but this is something new for the Ivies.</p>
<p>The only historical equivalent was the way HYP used to use Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, etc as PG holding pens for fattening up the cattle, fitting them out for future varsity service!</p>
<p>I don't understand who or what is the motivation for athletic emphasis at the Ivy League and other elite academic colleges.</p>
<p>I understand the motivation for most schools. For example, men's basketball was part of a marketing program that propelled Duke from a quality regional school fifty years ago to a nationally-recognized university. Lower down the food chain, it is easy to see how the University of Miami uses athletics as an integral part of their marketing. More recognition equals more applications equals more selectivity equals better rankings.</p>
<p>But, when you look at schools like Williams or Stanford or Harvard, I can't see that they are in desperate need of more applications, better students, or higher rankings.</p>
<p>If anything, there's something endearing about an academically-oriented school that DOESN'T take athletics that seriously. I believe that most graduates of these schools, at least since the 1950's, would prefer that their alma maters have walk-on programs for student-athletes, not programs that have some pretense of national championship winning teams -- especially when doing so obviously undermines the primary mission of the school.</p>
<p>Is Dartmouth a better university because it has produced an NFL quarterback? I don't think so. My alma mater (Williams) has gotten completely out of control. There is no longer a place for a walk-on student-athlete on the majority of the sports teams. Over-emphasis of athletics is the number one topic of discussion when the President meets with alumni groups and I know for a fact that it costs them good students, including my daughter who applied ED to Swarthmore despite having a double-legacy at Williams.</p>
<p>Do you have any sense of what drives this? Is it just the failure of the school leadership to stand up to small, but vocal alumni groups and clearly state the academic mission of the school?</p>
<p>As a football player who is applying to all of the ivy leagues I think that there should be very minimal recruiting of athletes. Its about academics, not athletic prowess</p>
<p>Without heavy recruiting, the Ivies would be unable to fill rosters with players who are not only academically talented, but also athletically skilled.</p>
<p>Similarly, the Ivies want the most talented musicians, best debaters, etc they can find, who are also ethnically, geographically and culturally diverse. All this requires heavy recruiting.</p>
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<p>this requires heavy recruiting.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Not when they have single digit acceptance rates. Now, Dartmouth may not get an NFL caliber quarterback as the luck of the draw, but I think they would be able to find field a football team quite nicely.</p>
<p>Actually, the only area elite colleges NEED recruiting is in an outreach program to lower income urban schools. Of course, this gets short-shrift compared to athletic recruiting.</p>
<p>One impetus for the new "outreach" efforts to draw in the economically disadvantaged via large "need-based" scholarship (Harvard essentially waiving tuition for those with a family incime under $50,000 for example) is that this is the only group with which the Ivies can compete - dollar for dollar - with Division I schools granting athletic scholarships. </p>
<p>The Ivies are constitutionally opposed to "Merit aid" - including athletic scholarships. If Harvard, say, is going head-to-head with, say, Stanford and Duke for a top "scholar-athlete", the latter two can always outbid Harvard for his services unless he is poor enough for Harvard to award him "need-based" aid.</p>
<p>Yes. The "Journal of Blacks in Higher Education" has noted the strong correlation between African-American male enrollment at elite colleges and varsity athletics. I think it's an issue that the academic community doesn't really want to talk about. It's kind of a mixed blessing. The academics are glad to tout the higher diversity numbers, but enrolling black athletes to stock the sports teams probably isn't what they idealistically had in mind for affirmative action.</p>
<p>It is clear that Swarthmore's black male enrollment has dropped since they dumped football. It showed up immediately as many of the football players transfered following the disbanding of the team. But, it continues to hurt their diversity numbers. This year's African-American freshman class is 75% female.</p>