<p>Looks like about half of that money was for seismic improvements ordered by the Regents as a public safety measure, due to the stadium being on top of an earthquake fault. The other half may be more dubious, more specifically the plan to sell luxury box seat licenses and such to fund the extra improvements.</p>
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<p>That’s their story, but it doesn’t cost a quarter of a billion bucks to do a seismic retrofit, if all you want to do is make the existing stadium safe. </p>
<p>College sports are not going away. They’ve been around for 125 years and (for better or worse) are a uniquely American concept. Which concept really doesn’t make much sense and which doesn’t really exist anywhere else. </p>
<p>Even in places like the Ivy League (which opted out of the big time decades ago) and the NESCAC still allocate a surprising amount of resources and student seats to athletes. About one third of Williams students, for example, are varsity athletes!!! 13% at Harvard. Those schools could choose to enroll the best/brightest worldwide, but they choose to enroll large numbers of kids who (while still being good students) have lower academic credentials than their other students. They don’t do that for poets or musicians. Harvard and Williams don’t make any dough from their huge sports programs, but they still choose to sponsor all those sports.</p>
<p>Most schools lose money on their sports (even football) and have to subsidize them. At big revenue schools, all sports other than mens hoops and football lose money. But those schools still maintain all those other sports that no one cares about or watches.</p>
<p>College sports is a weird idea. But so entrenched. </p>
<p>To be fair, I know for a fact that Yale actually does pursue creatives and does not give athletes much of a break. My youngest D was recruited by a couple of Ivies when she was in high school. She had the scores (for an Ivy athlete), but she was horrified by the work load and didn’t even consider them, at all. She has several friends at the Ivies, a few at Stanford, Duke, whatnot. These kids are super smart. I mean, even with the scores, my daughter was not in the same academic league as these kids. They are power students, particularly her best friend, who chose Yale.</p>
<p>My kid is bright, but not a classic “student.” She does well, high GPA at top StateU, lots of outside interests, real leader, but if she’d stayed an athlete, she’d be on a treadmill (figuratively). It’s a full time job. To be a weak student in a top athletic revenue program? It’s grueling.</p>
<p>Swat, like Yale, doesn’t give athletes much of a break, but Williams is like Dartmouth. The want their athletes. It’s a part of who they are.</p>
<p>
[quote]
A few years ago Cal dropped several sports (I think 5) and those sports-hating taxpayers of California went nuts and demanded those sports be reinstated.
[/quote
Here is a more nuanced view of what transpired.<br>
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<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/sports/09titleix.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/09/sports/09titleix.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0</a>
This does not sound like sports-hating taxpayers going nuts. </p>
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Espenshade et al. made clear that when GPA is taken into account, the bonus for athletes gets even larger while the bonus for legacies falls. Another important point is that the average bonus will differ wildly by team (both within and across schools). Here are data on football teams’ average SAT scores. The gaps between the teams’ average scores and the student bodies’ average scores are very large for the top institutions. <a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/paper-trail/2008/12/30/athletes-show-huge-gaps-in-sat-scores”>http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/paper-trail/2008/12/30/athletes-show-huge-gaps-in-sat-scores</a></p>
<p>At UNC, the average for freshman football players was 1060 versus 1305 for the overall freshman class. Note that the overall number incorporates those same athletes. Note also that the average GPA for the football players was 3.43, which is well below the level for other students. <a href=“http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/08/3516832/academic-performance-of-athletes.html”>http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/08/3516832/academic-performance-of-athletes.html</a> </p>
<p>Poetgirl – Yale gives athletes a break. It is embodied in the Academic Index system. Atlhetes in the aggregate can be one standard deviation off the academic credentails of students generally.</p>
<p>No way Yale wins the 2013 NCAA D1 ice hockey championship without giving out some breaks at the admissions office. The schools have leeway on how and who the breaks get allocated too. So the football star quarterback may get a big break. While another smart kid may be recruited as a third string punter (and get no break) in order to balance out the quarterback.</p>
<p>Yale does pursue creatives and other accomplishments. But I don’t think they cut the poets and singers a break at the admissions office. If you have the full academic stats, being a great poet can get you in versus another kid with the same stellar stats but less interesting ECs.</p>
<p>NCAA basketball POY candidate Frank Kaminsky has his own blog. It’s pretty interesting. See “The Moose Basketball” Also:</p>
<p><a href=“http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2014/11/08/wisconsin-ncaa-basketball-frank-kaminsky”>http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2014/11/08/wisconsin-ncaa-basketball-frank-kaminsky</a></p>
<p>Nice guys do finish first.</p>
<p><a href=“https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2LZbSuCQAABpDD.png:large”>https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2LZbSuCQAABpDD.png:large</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://sports.cbsimg.net/images/blogs/Russell-Wilson-Bradshaw.400.jpg”>http://sports.cbsimg.net/images/blogs/Russell-Wilson-Bradshaw.400.jpg</a></p>
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<p>For this result Espenshade used the following predictor variables:</p>
<p>
and not high school GPA. Because the SAT score would be expected to correlated with the high school GPA you would have to first remove the effect of high school GPA from the SAT bonus before you added the effect of high school GPA back in, otherwise you would be counting the effect of high school GPA more than once. For this data Espenshade states:</p>
<p>
The High school GPA data of the applicants is only available for one college of the three. You would not be able to remove the effect of the High school GPA from the admission SAT bonus data because this data is missing for 2 schools and therefore you would not be able to find the effect of High school GPA on the Admission SAT bonus data.</p>
<p>“Earlier in this thread people were arguing that these athletes should go to community college and get degrees from CCs - so it’s okay for SOME colleges to give degrees to illiterates but not other schools?”</p>
<p>That’s not what I said…I said that at a community college the less-academically talented athletes wouldn’t be as far behind the rest of the student body as they are at a place like UNC. And I should have added that [obviously] the community colleges have the remedial teachers and classes that are geared to help get folks like that up to speed…that’s one of the several main reasons they exist–to help those who fell through the academic cracks in high school.</p>
<p>Swinkidsdad’s primer on omitted variable bias brings back many fond memories, but it remains the case that athletes get large preferences in admissions. The Espenshade et al. results suggest that two applicants whose other demographic characteristics are the same have equal chances of being admitted if the athlete has a 200 point lower SAT out of 1600. But if the athlete also has a lower GPA, the advantage from being an athlete is even larger. (If the athlete had the same GPA as the non-athlete, he could have the same probability of admission with an even lower SAT.) That is what Espenshade et al. were saying in the cited passage:
The authors also look at trends over time.<br>
</p>
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It also remains the case that legacies get large preferences in admissions, although somewhat lower than athletes.</p>
<p>Again, averages can be misleading. Athletes on average get large preferences–but some athletes get huge preferences. I don’t think any legacies–except for development cases–get huge preferences. By the way, I think it is known that Espenshade’s data do not include Princeton, although it’s not know what specific colleges he did include.</p>
<p>Right, but I really think that Yale, while it has the academic index, does not really use it the same way as the other schools. They really don’t. I don’t know why, but the kids being recruited by the ivies all know this. It’s an open secret in the world of elite athletes and coaches.</p>
<p>Poetgrl It is because the Ivy schools do not award athletic scholarships. So the likes of Jameis Winstons will not go there even if offered. These kids and their parents know this because when they ask, they are told by the coaches. </p>
<p>As to Hunt’s comments, it should be added that all the actual admission benefit to Legacy and Athletes are under estimates because the average SAT takes into account students that actually score the school’s average SAT or higher. Believe it or not there are Athletes and Legacies that are qualified for admission to a school without the added benefit of being an Athlete or Legacy. If these students were taken out of the data pool, the actual “average” benefit of being a Legacy or Athlete is much greater.</p>
<p>i think, too, there have been many references on CC to the fact of the number of cross admits to ivies of the legacies, themselves, indicating that legacies are very qualified, academically, which, by the way, makes sense, since they have generally had the benefit of a high SES secondary education, as well ECs, test prep, and parents who knew the ropes. </p>
<p>Let me be clear, I’m familiar with the academic index. I know Ivies do not offer athletic scholarships. The kids in this area aren’t looking for scholarships, they are looking for a way to leverage their talent into a better school. (Or many of them are.) Nobody is getting any need based aid where my kids are from. But, among these kids, it is known that Yale is not giving anybody any breaks compared to the other Ivies. </p>
<p>Yale, in particular. </p>
<p>Kind of like everybody knows out of these top schools, Stanford wants their athletes most. </p>
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If you took those students out, it wouldn’t be an average.</p>
<p>Also, comparing athletes and legacies is complicated. SAT scores don’t tell the whole story, either. It’s my belief that many legacies “look like” the kinds of students the Ivies want, and that they do well in holistic evaluation. That’s not surprising. Supposedly Yale legacies do well getting into Harvard, and vice versa. So I think many of them have scores and grades that are good enough, but also impressive ECs and other achievements, in part because of their family opportunities. (Note: my kids were legacy admits at Yale, with stats that I think made them highly qualified. But they had more than just stats, in addition to being legacies.)</p>
<p>As for Yale, the previous administration made a decision to reduce athletic recruiting, much to the chagrin of some supporters. The Academic Index is still used, and athletes still get a benefit–there just aren’t as many of them as at some other Ivies.</p>
<p>Okay. </p>
<p>Good to know. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew that it was.</p>
<p>Hunt The point of the additional admission benefit is for those students who would not have gotten in without the additional boost in SAT that being a legacy or athlete affords them. If an athlete or legacy has the stats to get in without the additional benefit then they are not receiving any additional admission benefit from being a legacy or athlete so the additional SAT bump for being a legacy or athlete is not applicable to these students. </p>
<p>What this means is that those athletes and legacies that do receive a boost in SAT is much larger than what is reported. So the “average boost in SAT” should be only for those legacy and athletes that actually received the benefit.</p>