|
Intercollegiate Sports in America, 1900-2014 Spring 2015 Tuesday 4-6 and online Colleges and Sports Although some hoped that small liberal arts colleges could escape the need to focus on winning and recruiting athletic talent, recent experience has demonstrated that academic elitism provides no safe harbor from the competitive American commitment to winning. The practice of recruiting under prepared student-athletes and the overemphasis on winning extends down from big time Division I institutions into Division III schools. Perhaps the most extensive treatment of elite colleges and sports appears in two important books, James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton 2001) and William G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin, Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values (Princeton, 2005). Both of these books, along with other items included in the readings, show clearly that elite colleges and universities, public and private, large and small, give preferential treatment to talented athletes in admissions, but that these athletes in general have less successful college careers than their non-athletic counterparts. They also demonstrate that while big-time football programs at large public universities generate a significant amount of publicity and visibility, the impact on the student body is not as great as the impact of competitive athletics at small colleges where the competition is intense and the number of students is much smaller. Some commentators, however, believe that the effort to reconcile competitive sports with academic value is not only impossible but destructive of the institutions. Some call for separating sports entirely from college. Others think that it is impossible for academic values to compete against the power of competitive sports. Many worry that, whatever the rules, the impact of the intense competition in college sports on individual student-athletes is surely damaging, Much attention also focuses on the preparation of potential collegiate student-athletes in high school and prep school. © 2015 |