In Reclaiming the Game, William Bowen and Sarah Levin disentangle the
admissions and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on
athletes, and other students. In a field overwhelmed by reliance on
anecdotes, the factual findings are striking--and sobering. Anyone
seriously concerned about higher education will find it hard to wish
away the evidence that athletic recruitment is problematic even at those
schools that do not offer athletic scholarships.
Thanks to an expansion of the College and Beyond database that resulted
in the highly influential studies The Shape of the River and The Game
of Life, the authors are able to analyze in great detail the
backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college outcomes of athletes
and their classmates at thirty-three academically selective colleges and
universities that do not offer athletic scholarships. They show that
recruited athletes at these schools are as much as four times more
likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic
credentials. The data also demonstrate that the typical recruit is
substantially more likely to end up in the bottom third of the college
class than is either the typical walk-on or the student who does not
play college sports. Even more troubling is the dramatic evidence that
recruited athletes "underperform: " they do even less well academically
than predicted by their test scores and high school grades.
Over the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite
campuses has widened substantially. This book examines the forces that
have been driving this process and presents concrete proposals for
reform. At its core, Reclaiming the Game is an argument for
re-establishing athletics as a means of fulfilling--instead of
undermining--the educational missions of our colleges and universities.
