Latest Mellon Foundation Study of D-III Academic Performance and Athletics

Parents Forum
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<p>There's a new Mellon Foundation Report on the academic achievement and "representativeness" of student-athletes at D-III schools. Here's a link to a synopsis, which, in turn, has links to the full report.</p>

<p>divisioniii</a> / 09 / 03 / 2009 / News / Home - Inside Higher Ed</p>

<p>The report is almost entirely consistent with the past College Sports Project study and the work of Bowen and Levin (summarized in Reclaiming the Game).</p>

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Male athletes, on average,had class ranks 9 percentile points lower than male non-athletes. (A gap between female athletes and non-athletes was present, but the report called it "modest.") Subdividing male athletes further, those who were recruited had class ranks 6 percentile points lower than those who were not recruited.</p>

<p>Looking at how the 2005-6 cohort of students fared by the end of their second full year of college, the report acknowledges that the gap in average class rank between athletes and non-athletes shrank by one percentile point. Though small, the report muses that this reduction could possibly indicate “that athletes gradually make positive adjustments to the demands of academic life.” Otherwise, the data show two phenomena continuing from last year’s report and mirroring this report’s new incoming cohort: female athletes uniformly did better than their male counterparts, and both male and female non-recruited athletes had grade point averages only slightly below those of non-athletes.

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<p>One of the most striking features of the full report is one that you can only read between the lines of the Middlebury prof's comments: the degree to which recruited athletes at selective colleges underperform (that is; the extent to which they do even worse academically than you'd predict, even taking into account their lower HS grades and SAT scores). </p>

<p>Since much of the admissions-advantage-to-athletes ground has been gone over ad nauseum, I'll suggest as a starting point for the discussion a narrow question that focuses on group that seems be the most problematic: Do you think that the selective LACs (or the LAC that you know) strike the right balance with their admissions policies toward recruited athletes (i.e., tipped athletes, largely concentrated in a few sports), bearing in mind both the assets that these athletes bring to campus and the opportunity costs of not admitting another student who would have been more representative of the student body academically?</p>

2

<p>Not only did the female recruited athletes do better than male recruited athletes, but they also did better than male non-athletes. Across the board, the women were better on average than the men.</p>

3

<p>Yes. It's really only the male, recruited athletes in a few sports that are problematic at most selective LACs. My experience is that the coaches make more difference than the admission officers. If the coaches have an ethic of academics first, then the student-athletes, despite starting out at a competitive disadvantage, perform really well. It's only when there is that perfect storm of male, recruited athletes coupled with a coach whose emphasis is on the sport to the exclusion of the larger picture, that the student athletes struggle. And to the credit of the coaches, I'd say that most of them are "with the program."</p>

4

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Do you think that the selective LACs (or the LAC that you know) strike the right balance with their admissions policies toward recruited athletes (i.e., tipped athletes, largely concentrated in a few sports), bearing in mind both the assets that these athletes bring to campus and the opportunity costs of not admitting another student who would have been more representative of the student body academically?

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<p>The other part of that question has to do with the lost opportunity for diversity that comes because the cohort of recruited athletes at elite colleges is virtually all white. This results in campus cultures were very high percentages of white students are recruited varsity athletes while very low percentages of minority students are athletes. This leads to a sense of two completely distinct campus cultures sharing the facilities of a small college.</p>