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Game of Life
May. 1st, 2006 09:45 amBook read:
James Shulman and William Bowen, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton UP, 2001).
These are the authors who wrote The Shape of the River, using the Mellon Foundation's College and Beyond database to track the changing profile of minority students at elite colleges and their lives after college. This one is about sports, and got a lot of reviews and press when it came out, so the basic messages may be familiar to you: no, almost no college sports program pays for itself much less brings in revenue; at many schools alumni giving does not correlate to sports success (though at some it does); athletes are tending to be increasingly different from their peers in academic preparedness, political philosophy, and life goals, and interestingly this is most visible at the Division II and Ivy League schools; athletes get a much larger admissions advantage than either legacies or minorities, especially at Div. III/Ivy; the entire culture of many college campuses is changing as a result of the increased intensity of athletic recruiting and athletic culture, and especially at Div. III/Ivy schools where athletes are a much larger percentage of the student body (as much as 1/3) than Div. IA schools.
Recent rereads:
Georgette Heyes, The Unknown Ajax
Jennifer Crusie, Welcome to Temptation
James Shulman and William Bowen, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton UP, 2001).
These are the authors who wrote The Shape of the River, using the Mellon Foundation's College and Beyond database to track the changing profile of minority students at elite colleges and their lives after college. This one is about sports, and got a lot of reviews and press when it came out, so the basic messages may be familiar to you: no, almost no college sports program pays for itself much less brings in revenue; at many schools alumni giving does not correlate to sports success (though at some it does); athletes are tending to be increasingly different from their peers in academic preparedness, political philosophy, and life goals, and interestingly this is most visible at the Division II and Ivy League schools; athletes get a much larger admissions advantage than either legacies or minorities, especially at Div. III/Ivy; the entire culture of many college campuses is changing as a result of the increased intensity of athletic recruiting and athletic culture, and especially at Div. III/Ivy schools where athletes are a much larger percentage of the student body (as much as 1/3) than Div. IA schools.
Recent rereads:
Georgette Heyes, The Unknown Ajax
Jennifer Crusie, Welcome to Temptation