What is the academic index of the DD editorial board? There is none.

So why are only athletes submitted to this scrutiny?

Dan – How many college employees, who are not coaches, submit their wish lists to the Admissions Office. None?

Do you know why “Cornell University was not included in the study”?

This article is self serving for the editorial board— what are the advantages of an academically stronger student body—there are many ex-Dartmouth varsity athletes that are successful in all walks of like—how do you think the other IVIES are admitting athletes —the same way as Dartmouth.

Your editorial is very misleading—many Dartmouth varsity athletes are admitted with excellent academic records and continue their academic superiority at Dartmouth—I have met many that are now very successful alumni—and contribute many dollars towards facilities, scholarships/endowments for Dartmouth students. Some varsity sports also have AI bands to which only a limited amount can be admitted at the low end —you fail to even mention this—how many of the editorial board had a hook in to the admittance process because of work on your high school newspapers???? What measurable/factual results can Dartmouth gain in improving its so called academic image by increasing the present admission requirements for varsity athletes—-you generalize this but never quantify what will be achieved from increasing academic admissions requirements for Dartmouth athletes from where it is?? Leave Dartmouth’s Varsity Athletes alone!!

Athletes are submitted to this scrutiny because many of them get a pass!

If the College LOWERED ITS STANDARDS when admitting editors of the D as it does for some athletes, then they would have an academic index too.

Here is what Yale will do with your article:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2005/jan/20/letter-questions-value-of-ivy-football/?print

Not an overly impressive editorial, taking one isolated statistic and even that one out of context.

First, the AI was specifically designed to balance the recruiting process in the Ivies, so that H-Y-P did not dominate athletics, given their preferential brand recognition and won-loss record in overlapping recruiting offers. Since Dartmouth is #4 on that measure, the fact that they would rank #5 in any AI measure is not surprising.

Second, Dartmouth has one of the broadest athletic programs in the league, so it is is not surprising they have a greater number of teams doing anything by any measure. It would make a lot more sense to measure percent of athletes or percent of teams in any particular AI band.

Third, the league tracks the AI by college very closely every year and over the past decade, Dartmouth has consistently ranked in the top half of the league on average AI for its student-athletes.

Finally, even the spirit of the article is “off.” Dartmouth is supposed to produce leaders, not intellectuals. We could fill a class with students who have 2400 SAT scores and 4.0 GPAs. I can tell you, as a corporate recruiter at Dartmouth and Tuck, we favor student-athletes, as they have clearly and consistently demonstrated to us that they are among the very best leaders and the hardest workers.

Chris – Dartmouth could fill all of its teams with great “student-athletes” who “are among he very best leaders and the hardest workers” without there being any athletic recruitment. The teams just wouldn’t be as good. In fact, these students are excluded from teams now because there is a separate class of students brought in to fill this role. Or some of these students go to Division III schools instead. To suggest that the alternative to recruiting athletes is to accept only “intellectuals” misses the point.

DB—The ultimate impact of the AI (which requires the entering class of Ivy student-athletes to be within one standard deviation of the entire entering class) is to greatly limit the amount of compromising the Ivy institutions can do in recruiting athletes. The school cannot recruit ANY athletes below the AI minimum….and the entire entering class of student-athletes must meet the standards set by the league.

The Ivies have done an amazing job of managing their brand for the past 200 years. The role of the student-athlete has been central to this process. Yes, we could give up caring about recruiting student-athletes….or minority/diversity candidates…..or international candidates…..or legacies……or students with disabilities……or outstanding musicians…….etcetc

And, of course, we could stop altogether caring about sports as a society, but this is all part of the free market place of values and ideas talking…..athletics is a core part of our society and not just because we “like watching”. But because the life experiences, lessons and values one learns on the playing fields are deemed to be truly unique…..and important.

By the way, what outstanding colleges do not recruit student-athletes? They ALL do — Ivies, Stanford, NESCAC schools, Duke, etc. All of them. Wonder why that is?

And by the way, other outstanding academic institutions, like the NESCAC schools and schools like Stanford and Duke make far greater compromises in recruiting athletes than do the Ivies.

Let’s find out what Kim, Sheehy, and Asch think about this subject before we waste any more time here. Sounds like a good job for an ambitious D reporter. Come on, guys at the D, do something for a change. Athletes want to win. They are competitive, goal-oriented, driven, ambitious, competitive, etc. Prove to us that you are too. It’s not enough to be smarter than the dumb jocks. Writing editorials is soft duty. Keep going. PLEASE.

I didn’t realize how bad the D was until I graduated. This piece is an absolute joke.

Do not be bullied..it is troubling as reported in the Alumni Magazine in November that the AD was able to make a call to Pres Kim to take care of the “problems we’re having with Admissions and Financial Aid. Dart should do what Brown did and elevate the AI for athletes…

Before you apologists for athletics get too worked up over this, you might want to read through the two very large, data-filled books on this topic by Bowen and colleagues. The short answer is that recruited athletes (in all sports but some worse than others) are on average significantly less able students than nonrecrutes. More seriously, the athletes substantially underperform even their modest entering credentials, securing disproportionate ranks in the bottom quartile of the class. Of course, none of this will surprise any professor who has had substantial numbers of them in a class or any student. Of course there are exceptions, bright athletes who do well, but the point is that they are just that, exceptions.

I agree completely with Alan Stam on the value of participation in athletics in the development of the individual and on the value of athletes to the overall academic community. But, it does not follow from this, that it is necessary to lower standards to recruit athletes. Plenty of athletes meet the standards for sure. Plenty of other students would play sports if they were allowed. Why can’t every athlete be a walk-on? Aren’t the editors and reporters at the D walk-ons? Do we recruit Aires?

“Your editorial is very misleading—many Dartmouth varsity athletes are admitted with excellent academic records and continue their academic superiority at Dartmouth—I have met many that are now very successful alumni—and contribute many dollars towards facilities, scholarships/endowments for Dartmouth students”. Who are you? Emily Dickinson? The hyphens are a little excessive, and this sentence’s poor construction doesn’t really do much to support the enthusiastic but of yet ungrounded claim that student athletes contribute positively to Dartmouth’s academic environment. Take a look at the comparative eloquence of the posts above, and you’ll see that the quality of posts in favor of prioritizing scholastic achievement vastly outshines that of those adopting the opposite position. It’s absolutely outrageous that anyone would even attempt to defend athletics at the expense of academics. Our school’s mission isn’t to win a few football games that nobody cares about/attends—it’s to educate people and prepare them to perform great feats. That anyone would sacrifice our scholastic prestige for a couple of championship titles is mind-blowing and suggests that we as a community really need to rethink our priorities.

Rebecca, get off your high horse and recognize there are values other than syntactical prowess. Your contention that “quality of post supporting” is an accurate metric for quality of argument is laughable.

It is not “absolutely outrageous” to argue that we, as a community, should value more than one attribute in selecting candidates for enrollment. Put simply, diversity is a value in and of itself. According to your post, it would seem unreasonable to consider factors other than athletics in selecting students. I hope you would not express similar emotions at an editorial describing differential rates of minority pre-college achievement. Following this, I hope you would recognize that one’s contribution to the college is not simply defined in terms of contributions to its “academic environment.” You would do well to note that our school’s official mission makes more than passing reference to creating leaders. I can assure you that athletic achievement is one way to breed effective leaders (if we’re bringing up solely anecdotal evidence, look to the numerous former athletes at the tops of their fields, whatever their merits, i.e. jeff immelt and hank paulson).

Further, those “couple of championships” serve as lightening rods for alumni donations. These donations increase our endowment and the quality of our academic community. Perhaps you disagree with this method of donation allocation, fine, but it is at the very least prudent for a college focused on academics to promote an excellent athletics program.

Finally, the implied slippery slope argument at the end of your post barely merits response. We are not “sacrificing” our scholastic prestige, we are making a calculated decision to increase the quality of our college. It is your thick-headed insistence on a one-dimensional view of the proper college experience that is truly dangerous for a pluralistic academic community. Should we pay attention to the academic standards of our athletes? Yes, of course. Is the current admissions practice antithetical to the colleges values or its ability to operate as a top-notch academic community? Not in the slightest.

How much do we really know about what happens in non-athletic admissions? Just as an example, I play the trombone. In 2000, the year I matriculated at Dartmouth, both the Barbary Coast Jazz Ensemble and the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra graduated three members of their respective trombone sections (i.e. six total students, not the same three students). Did the fact that I play the trombone, as opposed to saxophone, trumpet or tuba, help me get admitted to Dartmouth? Would it have helped me as much a year earlier or a year later? I’ll never know, but I have considered the possibility that my choice of instrument was a factor.

As for the question of athletic recruitment, anyone who comments on this issue should be aware that the only significant movement that takes place on this issue will be action taken by all eight Ivy League institutions simultaneously. Each school values its association with the other seven too much to sever ties. With that having been said, I would pose this question: What is it that the Editorial Board and the writers of comments supporting the editorial hoping to accomplish through the end of athletic recruitment? How would Dartmouth be demonstrably better as a College without athletic recruitment? What great evil do recruited athletes visit upon the College that needs to be eliminated? The priority of any large-scale action taken by the College administration should be for the overall betterment of Dartmouth College and the Dartmouth community. While it’s certainly a noble goal to make college admissions more “fair,” I have yet to see evidence that Dartmouth would be better off without athletic recruitment.

Two comments. First to Kevin. I will not argue with the fact that athletes tend to score lower than the rest of the student body. However, the reason for this is simply one thing: TIME. Athletes don’t have it. Now I fully acknowledge that any student at any Ivy League institution is crunched for time and has outside commitments besides classes. Nonetheless, few very of these commitments are comparable in the amount of physical, emotional and even psychological energy that is exerted over four years of playing a varsity sport, not even counting the injuries that are sustained after the athletic career is over.

My second point is regarding the inconsistency of Dartmouth’s athletic success over the past decade. There are several factors contributing to this trend, most of which Kim and Sheehy are directly addressing with new programs, including helping athletes with their academics so they aren’t scoring low. However one major factor to be considered is the D-plan. It is a blessing and a curse for athletics. It is invaluable for personal and academic growth and one of the main reasons I personally choose Dartmouth. On the other hand, being away from your coaches, teammates and facilities for 3 weeks does very little to help your skills, strength or game IQ. This ultimately puts teams at a disadvantage against the other Ivies who have their team training year round together (because they don’t have the option to take off).

We all want to see Dartmouth succeed. The author of this editorial and all the commentators comprise a very diverse community of students, alumni and administrators therefore making it very important to not jump to conclusions about one another’s lives and choices when you haven’t taken the time to fully understand the whole picture. 

The logic of this article, and it’s blatantly biased attention to certain statistics, is more shameful than the conservative blabber of Roger Lott. Parade your bitter jealousy of socially successful students elsewhere.