Hmm. Just one example but my kids’ high school (a private college prep) has a sizable number of high-achieving but low SES/URM/first gen. Some of these are also RA’s who go to top schools, including Stanford, in a variety of sports but mostly football and basketball. We’ve had a fencer or two over the years and I now understand why a classmate of my son’s - bright, talented, class speaker - went to an Ivy for her sport rather than Stanford. She was able to check many boxes, in addition to being a recruited fencer. But maybe that didn’t matter to Stanford, because fencing is for “the rich.” An example, perhaps, that individuals can be overlooked when they don’t conform to the “category.” But, she landed on her feet so no harm done.
Are you saying that Stanford didn’t admit this particular student because she wasn’t part of the “the rich”? Do you have any evidence for this belief besides assumptions?
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Of course not. But cutting the fencing program within a year of her recruitment points to plans - or at the very least discussions - and another poster supposed that these could have involved the category of “the rich” as a motivation to cut the program. This student is not “rich” but she is accomplished and would be an asset to any top school. What is clear in any case is that her particular athletic talent didn’t conform to Stanford’s plans.
At Stanford, “athletics has been a self-sustaining entity on our campus, and we are striving to preserve that model.” Given its Power 5 football status, Stanford is in the enviable position to be self-sustaining. Maybe the same is true for USC, Northwestern, Duke and Vandy.
Four female and three male freshmen on the Stanford roster. With five scholarships across its team, its interesting that it couldn’t do better than 12th last year. That was behind five Ivies. UCSD was the only other West Coast team in the top 20. Therefore, unless you’re set on Stanford, the Ivy competition may be more enticing.
Brown also dropped fencing this year. It only has two freshmen its female roster but fortunately five seniors out of thirteen total.
The comments about the cut sports “getting a lot of attention these days for being affirmative action for rich people” mean that top HS athletes in unpopular “preppy” sports like sailing and to a lesser extent fencing tend to be upper SES. While more widely popular sports like football, basketball, and soccer tend to have a much wider SES distribution. This makes giving a huge admission boost to sailors, fencers, and similar athletic recruits like affirmative action for rich kids. It gives admission preference to a group than many believe do not need further admission preference. It does not mean that the school only admits fencers, if they are rich. It means that the high level recruitable fencing population tends to be dominated by high SES kids.
If Stanford is trying to reduce this preference for upper SES wealthy kids, then that’s all the more reason to admit this particular student who you say “is not rich.” It’s possible that Stanford reduced their fencing recruiting recently, if there was talk of eliminating fencing in the near future. However, there are also countless other reasons why she may have been rejected. Maybe Stanford already had other top recruits in her fencing position (don’t know correct term) and didn’t need any more in that position. Maybe she was rejected for other reasons besides fencing. Stanford only has a 4% admit rate and rejects kids for all kinds of reasons. Their admission system is not the same as other colleges. It’s quite common for kids to be admitted to an Ivy and not Stanford, regardless of athletic status.
A single opinion article is not enough data points to form a pattern. I’m sure some Chicago students would be happy to write an opinion article criticizing Chicago, if given an appropriate platform. They might include some comments along the lines of the Stanford article and some comments that are completely unrelated. However, a single opinion article does not suggest a good reflection of the full student body, particularly if that article is in a paper that emphasizes providing a voice for minority views. If you look at surveys of a larger portion of the student body, you’ll get a completely different view.
For example, some numbers from Stanford’s senior survey are at Workbook: Senior Survey Public Dashboards . Satisfaction with overall undergrad education and quality of instruction are very high… some of the highest numbers in the survey.
- 91% of students are satisfied with overall undergrad education, 2% are dissatisfied
- 91% of students are satisfied with quality of instruction, 9% are dissatisfied
The survey does highlight some areas with noteworthy declines in recent years and/or not as high satisfaction, but they are not the same ones the author mentions. For example:
- 77% of URMs were satisfied with diversity in 2015-16 compared to 58% in 2019-20
- 74% of women were satisfied with administration responsiveness to student concerns in 2013-14 compared to 38% in 2016-17. It’s only increased slightly to 46% since then.
- Only ~60% of humanities students are satisfied with room in schedule for exploration, significantly less than STEM students
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The polling result for diversity was probably influenced by national race/ethnicity politics. Note that non-URMs’ satisfaction also declined, but it started higher and declined less than for URMs.
The polling result for administration responsiveness was probably influenced by the Brock Turner case which occurred in 2015. Satisfaction declined significantly for both women and men, but men started out slightly less satisfied and declined less, so that men are slightly more satisfied than women in the most recent year listed.
The polling result for room for schedule exploration seems odd. Are non-STEM majors at Stanford more voluminous in requirements than STEM majors? At many colleges, STEM majors, particularly the E (engineering) majors, tend to be among the ones with higher volumes of requirements.
The author herself expressed disappointment and frustration in an opinionated piece in a publication full of such views. Her political views have been very consistent, so no interpretation is necessary. We have some media outlets pumping out similar views everywhere and at all times. It’s just a sign of the times.
I am looking at this situation a tad differently from you two. To be clear, I wasn’t trying to be specific about someone’s recruitment process. I of course don’t have that information.
Here’s what I’m trying to get at: by eliminating a sport, you potentially eliminate the opportunity to attract a scholar. That might not matter; it will depend on your reasons for cutting the program. If it “favors the rich” and doesn’t make money, and your goals as a university are to admit more low SES and keep athletics as a self-sustaining enterprise, then you aren’t going to care about talented low SES scholars of color who happen to fence. They can be surely be replaced by other athletes who play football, basketball, etc. and who check the same diversity boxes. If, however, you believe that athletics helps to contribute to a particularly astute and successful type of scholar (one who probably won’t need to read “Grit” - or who might even be able to write their own version!) and you cut the program, you eliminate a chance for that type of scholar to show up at your university. It’s a simple question: Why does Stanford want athletes on campus? And it speaks to a general discussion point, rather than one about this person or that sport. I think perhaps in all the detailed talk of athletics at Stanford, we haven’t addressed the question yet. By doing so, perhaps we can answer OP’s query.
Two thoughts.
First, the sports that were eliminated were sports that more privileged kids would tend to pursue, not great if you are shooting for more SES or ethnic diversity.
Second in terms of less humanities core requirements, it really comes down to how much the university values control (Chicago core) vs student choice (Brown). These resource rich colleges are like a grand buffet, Do you insist that students have to eat certain things from the buffet, or do you pick the kids that are invited and let them choose?
Stanford clearly values a high percentage of elite athletes who are collectively also outstanding students. 240 students were impacted. Those elite athletes will be replaced to students elite in something else.
If we assume 60 per class were eliminated, and Stanford wants to keep its class size the same, what outstanding things will the new 60 do and will their skills/spikes be needed in club sports, arts or just nice to have? Are the impacted 60 concentrated in STEM, Econ, Pre-Med or will the new 60 contribute to other, under-represented majors? Are those 60 student-athletes bringing lower than average academics? If so, Stanford can replace them with needy, but spectacular, students while better balancing its athletic budget and not taking university resources.
I’m particularly interested in that last set of statistics, Data10! What do you see as the reason for such a sharp decrease in satisfaction with diversity among URM’s in such a short period of time? The stats for women responders isn’t much better. And that humanities response isn’t unconnected to what we’ve been discussing here, although there may be a variety of reasons why hum students feel they need a more liberal schedule. In any case, perhaps Stanford, unconsciously or otherwise, is de-emphasizing an ability to engross oneself in literature, art history, philosophy and languages.
To your other point, recall that my response was answering 1NJ’s conclusion that the author’s piece must have risen out of a sense of frustration over being a minority political view on campus. That’s speculative at best. There has been a lack of ability on this thread to discuss the issues brought up by the opinion piece itself, and a LOT of speculation as to possible motivation for writing it, much of which has been tainted by confirmation bias. Not surprising, when so much guesswork is involved.
UChicago Maroon conducted class surveys up until a few years ago. Not sure why they ceased but the response percentage was usually pretty poor so that might be a reason. UChicago students will often write critical opinion pieces - in the Maroon and elsewhere. I don’t think there’s been anything along the lines of the complaints Ms. Nordquist had about Stanford, which is kind of why OP was contrasting the two places. In fact, students usually complain that the university is way too lenient about allowing “harmful speech.” Here’s an example of what I mean:
And here is the response by the UChicago student version of “The Stanford Review”:
(now let’s sit back and watch the renewed attempts at derailing the thread, this time by attacking Ms. Duffy 
)
Picking up on Data’s surmise that “some Chicago students would be happy to write an opinion article criticizing Chicago, if given an appropriate platform” - yes, that could certainly be so. However, we actually have some interesting data on how conservative students at Chicago feel about being at a predominantly liberal institution.
This is a survey of students from some 55 colleges, with samples of around 300 from each, on the question, broadly speaking, of how these students ranked their own college on various measures of free speech. Not surprisingly, Chicago’s students ranked their school highest overall by a large measure. Stanford’s students ranked Stanford well down in the pack (36 of 55).
What was more surprising was that the sample at Chicago included a far higher percentage of students identifying as liberal than almost all the peer schools (76% Chicago as against 74% Columbia; 69% Yale; 68% Stanford; and 73% for the average of the ivies). Only 11% of Chicago students described themselves as conservative. Even with that small percentage of conservative students Chicago was ranked third overall by those students (with the two higher ranking schools being ones in which conservatives form a large majority). That was a real outlier in that generally the students that gave their colleges high marks for free speech were in the majority politically at those colleges. That makes sense inasmuch as if your own speech is majority speech you would encounter no pushback and would naturally believe your school to be a paradise of free speech. Chicago conservatives are the smallest of minorities, yet they still give their school high marks in that department. That anomaly is actually unique in the survey.
This is not to say that a conservative student at Chicago might not feel some discomfort (of course, discomfort isn’t a bad thing) in such an environment, and indeed by one of the measures of free speech (avoidance of self-censorship) Chicago did not do particularly well among its conservative students: 82% admitted to this; whereas only 40% of liberals admitted to it. However, 88% of all students of all political stripes agreed that freedom of speech was the norm on this campus. That seems to be a badge that Chicago students wear proudly, even if not always perfectly honored. That was very heartening to me as an old alum of leftish disposition who imbibed the philosophy of freedom of expression long ago at Chicago and does not wish to see it become the exclusive preserve of any political perspective.
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I would argue that this is one main area where schools might differ from one another. Each will have a purpose and an identity, and curricular approach will be consistent with those.
Football and basketball are one of the few revenue earning sports at Stanford (and elsewhere), so these 2 sports are often treated with especially high priority. At most schools with a successful Div I football/basketball program, the highest salary member of the college is usually the football or basketball coach, often by a factor of several times over the president. For example, Stanford’s football coach has a >$4 million salary (more than the full athletic budget at NESCAC schools) in spite of having a mediocre season in recent years, compared to ~$1 million salary for Stanford’s present. Football and basketball recruiting are serious business.
The vast majority of football and basketball team members are recruited athletes, so who the coach recruits has a strong influence on who becomes a team member. I’d be extraordinarily surprised if the Stanford football and basketball coaches have a primary goal in recruiting of getting more low SES kids or URM kids. Their primary goal is instead to have the best possible team they can, regardless of whether their recruited athletes are high SES, low SES, White, URM, or other. It’s common for football and basketball coaches salary and future career prospects to be largely tied to how well their team performs. They have a strong vested interest in recruiting the best possible team, regardless of race or SES.
In addition to athletic performance, coaches also have to work with the high academic standards of the university, which can tremendously limit the portion of available recruits in these sports. I very much doubt the university imposes similar “diversity” restrictions on the pool of available recruits. The school has other mechanisms to insure sufficient diversity that does not notably interfere with the critical recruiting for the revenue earning football and basketball teams. There is a limited supply of football and basketball recruits who are exceptional enough athletes to enhance Stanford’s teams (usually nationally ranked in their position), while also meeting the academic demands of Stanford; so a Stanford coach could not easily interchange them with someone else who checks off more “diversity boxes,” even if the university did for some surprising reason encourage this.
It’s a similar idea for fencing. The fencing coach wants to have the best possible fencing team he/she can. He will absolutely care about low SES scholars of color who happen to fence, if he believes they are going to help improve the team. The university also would no doubt be happy to have a more diverse fencing team. However, top HS fencers are rarely low SES and rarely URM, so this almost never happens. The reasons why the vast majority of top HS fencers are upper SES and ORM are beyond the scope of this thread, so I won’t diverge.
More detailed stats are below. The number of Hispanic students decreased significantly, so one would expect fewer students to be satisfied with diversity to some extent. However, I think the decrease in satisfaction probably has more to do with changes in national politics involving diversity, as ucbalumnus suggested. I expect that you’d see a similar pattern at most other colleges.
2015-16: 111 Black / 291 Hispanic, 86% of non-URMs satisfied with diversity, 77% URMs satisfied with diversity
2019-20: 107 Black / 230 Hispanic, 77% of non-URMs satisfied with diversity, 58% URMs satisfied with diversity
The survey asked about “room in your academic schedule for exploration”. ~70% of Eng/CS/Natural Science kids said they were satisfied with room in schedule for exploration compared to ~60% of humanities kids. I agree this is somewhat counterintuitive because humanities majors tend to require far fewer units for the major than engineering, giving the student more time to explore. It may relate to STEM majors typically being more understanding of the requirements. For example, bio + pre-med doesn’t leave a lot of room for exploring, but I expect pre-med students understand that a lot of requirements are expected for their goals. Similarly while Stanford requires a lot of engineering units, it’s smaller than typical ABET schools, which may result in more understanding.
It’s an insignificant sample size. For example, if you compare the # year period prior to the article, do you see a notable difference in the number or type of articles between Stanford and Chicago in similar types of newspapers (comparing mainstream to mainstream and conservative to conservative)? Or is it just a single outlier opinion article that is not suggestive of any kind of trend or pattern?
Of course the revenue sports coaches aren’t bound to diversity targets. However the mix is much more diverse in URM, first gen and lower income than the expunged sports. Stanford admin knows that the coaches are likely to recruit a robust mix of students in its aim to attract the best athletes who also meet the university’s academic needs.
There’s less competition to be elite in fencing, squash, crew and lacrosse. And these sports are largely played in wealthy areas. Squash, tennis and golf require access to clubs. Some can make it with public parks and natural ability but far fewer.
Regardless of what you think of this woman’s writing, I have heard the same complaint from recent Stanford graduates. That the school has become not much more than a pricey vo-tech school that spits out graduates for high-paid careers in Silicon Valley. Don’t shoot the messenger.
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Non-college-specific surveys have found falling satisfaction with race relations over a similar period, so falling satisfaction at colleges or a specific college may by a byproduct or part of general decline here.
You’re right. My memory was swayed by certain cases that stuck more clearly in my mind…
Let me try a different angle. Stanford writes it “cannot support 36 varsity sports at a championship level.”
Let me guess at a rephrasing (that they’ll never publicly say): “Stanford didn’t see enough of a return on their recruited athletes in these sports.”
The somewhat discredited Atlantic piece specifically names squash and fencing as sports where parents feel that money can produce high level athletes for purposes of elite school admission. The corollary to that view is that the parents picked these sports, not the student-athlete.
If that narrative is right, what you’d see in certain sports (fencing and squash are named in that article) is that after elite admission, the student-athlete would simply drop the sport. Coincidentally or not, that happened to the author - elite fencer, drops out after freshman year. A poor “return on recruiting” if you will.
While Stanford phrases these cuts in financial terms, I’ll make an educated guess that they didn’t find an adequate “return on recruiting” from these sports. I mean Stanford is picking from an elite poo of really talented kids, and maybe they decided, let’s give an extra slot to a top math kid (or drama kid), and take it away from the fencer. Specifically they might have seen in the data that the top math/drama/etc kid stays loving math/drama/etc while the top fencers for whatever reason stop doing it.