In a book published this month, former University president William Bowen GS '58 and coauthor Sarah Levin argue that extensive reforms are needed to combat what they see as a widening divide between the athletic and academic sides of campus life at the nation's top colleges and universities.
The book, published by Princeton University Press and titled "Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values," presents the findings of a study based on data gathered at 33 of the most academically prestigious institutions in the country, including all members of the Ivy League in addition to well-known liberal arts colleges in the Midwest and western states.
The book shares some data with the 2001 book, "The Game of Life," which Bowen co-wrote with James Shulman.
The "most striking finding" of the study is that there are significant differences in academic performance not just between recruited athletes and non-athletes but also between recruited athletes and walk-on athletes, Bowen said in an interview.
This distinction was not made in "The Game of Life," which focused on aggressive recruitment of athletes, the admissions advantages they receive and underperformance in the classroom.
The study found that recruited athletes who were included on a coach's list at the admissions office earn far lower grades than both their fellow athletes who were walk-ons and other students, Bowen said.
The study also found that recruited athletes earn far lower grades than what might be expected based on their incoming academic credentials, he added.
"I think the reason is that, perfectly understandably, they're more focused on their sports," he said.
"Coaches naturally zero in on people who are going to focus more on athletics," he said.
The study also found that athletes tend to pursue study in social science and business, spend large amounts of time together even outside of the formal demands of membership on a team, limit extracurricular activity to their sport and live with other athletes, according to a press release about the book.
The findings of the study suggest there are significant problems with the system of athletic recruitment, Bowen said.
There are notable "opportunity costs" resulting from the current system, Bowen said. Many people who would participate in other extracurricular activities on campus are denied admission, for example, and there are reduced opportunities for students who are not recruited to participate in intercollegiate athletics, he said.
The split between academic and athletic aspects of campus life "is a wide divide that is widening," he said.
This rift has been caused by the changing nature of sports in America due to "increasing specialization" and by academic changes that have led to a greater emphasis on active learning and independent work, Bowen said. These changes mean that "it is harder to do everything" now than in previous decades, he said.
Bowen said he was concerned with some of these issues when he was University president from 1972 until 1988.
"[At that time] there were more differences between the athletes and the rest of the student body than was desirable," he said.
The presidents of the Ivy League colleges in that era had concerns about the issue, but had no data available to them at the time, he added.
Bowen said the split between athletic and academic sides of campus has widened and athletic recruitment has since increased.
Major reforms are needed to solve the problems found in the study, Bowen said. "Just tweaking the system . . . is not going to accomplish much," he said.
However, eliminating recruitment "is not a viable thing to do," he said.
These colleges and universities should make it a priority in admissions and recruitment to bring in athletes who will be representative of their overall student bodies in terms of academic performance, fields of study and roles in other aspects of student life, he said.
"It's a matter of admitting students who want to do these things," he said.
Bowen also suggested there could be separate national championships in which only schools who committed to these new goals in recruiting would participate.
During his presidency, Bowen urged administrators to examine the test scores and academic performance of recruited athletes prior to admission, he said.
"What we should have focused on was not what athletes looked like when they came in but what they looked like when they went out," he added.
Bowen, who is president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will discuss related issues in a lecture on Sept. 25 at 8 p.m. in McCosh 50.
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