Reclaiming
the Game: College Sports and Educational Values.
William G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. 490. $19.95, paper. ISBN:
0-691-12314-4. TEL: 609-258-7879 • FAX: 609-258-1335
Bowen (President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and former President of
Princeton University) and Levin (a doctoral student at the Harvard School
of Public Health and research associate at Mellon) disentangle the admissions
and academic experiences of recruited athletes, walk-on athletes, and other
students. The factual findings here are striking and sobering: Athletic recruitment
is a serious problem, even at schools without athletic scholarships.
Thanks to an expanded “College and Beyond” database on 90,000
students at 30 selective colleges and universities in the 1950s, 1970s, and
1990s, the authors analyze deeply the backgrounds, academic qualifications,
and college outcomes of athletes and their classmates at schools not offering
athletic scholarships. They show that recruited athletes at these schools
are up to four times as likely to gain admission than other applicants with
similar academic credentials.
Data also show the typical recruit substantially more likely to end up in
the bottom third of the college class than the typical walk-on or the student
who does not play sports. Further, recruited athletes underper-form, doing
even worse academically than their test scores and high school grades predicted.
In the last four decades, the athletic-academic divide on elite campuses has
widened substantially. This book tells why and gives concrete reform proposals.
It argues to re-establish athletics as a means of fulfilling—not undermining—the
educational missions of our colleges and universities.
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