College sports are affirmative action for rich white students according to The Atlantic

Wolf's Bane wrote:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/college-sports-benefits-white-students/573688/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=the-atlantic-fb-test-500-3-&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR39Ovb4UM-p5s8Lt2zFB24XwKeieNp7_5Cj_HWkw3S_TMyJyIzyH0ibT_I

It points to lacrosse, sailing, hockey. In some conferences, athletes are as high as 79% white.

Wonder what percentage of basketball is black?

Lol @ varsity sailing. Sounds like a bunch of rich kids getting a scholarship/admissions assistance just to sit on a boat and relax.

LoneStarXC wrote:

Lol @ varsity sailing. Sounds like a bunch of rich kids getting a scholarship/admissions assistance just to sit on a boat and relax.

I'm pretty sure the number of scholarships in sailing is very few.

Anyway, it is also in the olympics and it isnt very relaxing.

Well here in the republic of texxxas we have rodeo as a college sport. No other place in the west has that

The point of the article is that overall, athletes are 61% white and 65% white in the Ivy Leagues, despite football and basketball being majority black, and that because athletes constitute a large proportion of undergraduates, larger than minority or legacy admissions, this constitutes a form of affirmative action for whites. The whites advantaged tend very much to be wealthy because youth sports today are extremely expensive. 46% of recruited athletes at Harvard had family incomes over $250,000, vs. around 1/3 of all Harvard students. And athletes were just under 20%, according to the article, although that seems way too low. At liberal arts colleges, you find participation rates in intercollegiate athletics well over 25%.

Lets imagine that all schools in the country stopped considering athletics in the admissions process today. Does anyone really think that rich white kids are the ones who would lose the most from this hypothetical policy change?

The kid in this article would have gone to some other great school instead of Harvard without admissions preference. Lower SES kids who get athletic scholarships are often kids who wouldn’t have gone to college at all without sports.

Do we really hate privilege so much that we’d want to turn thousands of poor kids away from college entirely just to prevent a few rich kids from getting into Harvard instead of Cornell?

zcxvxcv wrote:

The point of the article is that overall, athletes are 61% white and 65% white in the Ivy Leagues, despite football and basketball being majority black, and that because athletes constitute a large proportion of undergraduates, larger than minority or legacy admissions, this constitutes a form of affirmative action for whites. The whites advantaged tend very much to be wealthy because youth sports today are extremely expensive. 46% of recruited athletes at Harvard had family incomes over $250,000, vs. around 1/3 of all Harvard students. And athletes were just under 20%, according to the article, although that seems way too low. At liberal arts colleges, you find participation rates in intercollegiate athletics well over 25%.

Well that's just terrible. Using SJW logic (equal outcomes), there should 88% white student athletes, as that is more representative of the national population break down.

zcxvxcv wrote:

The point of the article is that overall, athletes are 61% white and 65% white in the Ivy Leagues, despite football and basketball being majority black, and that because athletes constitute a large proportion of undergraduates, larger than minority or legacy admissions, this constitutes a form of affirmative action for whites. The whites advantaged tend very much to be wealthy because youth sports today are extremely expensive. 46% of recruited athletes at Harvard had family incomes over $250,000, vs. around 1/3 of all Harvard students. And athletes were just under 20%, according to the article, although that seems way too low. At liberal arts colleges, you find participation rates in intercollegiate athletics well over 25%.

Let me get this straight. 61% of the athletes are white in the Ivy.

General population of the USA is in the ballpark of 72% white.

I'm not a mathematician, so what am I missing?

(This is to say nothing about D1 basketball and football.)

Non-Hispanic whites are about 64% of the U.S. population and getting smaller every day.

You make a good/true point, but miss the point of the article. The point of the article stands regardless of national demographics.

The article is simply stating that most student athletes are white, and that being a student athlete is a boost for admissions in many schools, such that Student X would have 'only' gone to Cornell but is now at Harvard, while Student Y may have 'only' gone to Utah State but is now at University of Utah. If that is all true (and basic statistics clearly shows that it is), then you could truthfully conclude that college athletics serves as an admissions boost which applies disproportionally to white students, again regardless of national demographics. In the article they also state that many of the majority white sports (which is most of the sports) also cost a lot of money/time/resources (e.g. skiing, fencing, crew, etc.), again granting a boost to the affluent.

It may (or may not) be separately true that black students (in football and basketball) get a disproportionate amount of dedicated athletic scholarship money. But, the article here is focused primarily on admissions.

If I remember correctly, in other posts you've suggested getting rid of college sports all together (if that wasn't you, my apologies). In any case, I agree with that position; I think universities would be so much better off without sports anyway.

Not sure if I'll read this. The Atlantic is obnoxious.

the430miler wrote:

Well here in the republic of texxxas we have rodeo as a college sport. No other place in the west has that

This is not true:

It is incorrect to term athletics as affirmative action for whites; but it does correctly establish the troubling fact that youth sports are becoming too expensive.

Football and Track have diverse student participation because the primary recruting level is high school, the way it should be.

A lot of other sports practically require you to be members of expensive travel teams to be recruited.

I think soccer and lax are the worst but there other offenders.

I spoke with a coach at a pretty elite tier school about the scholarship and the cost in attaining it.

My point was that the parents of kids spend a lot of money and might get a 5% or 10% scholarship. It might not be a great return on investment since there is no guarantee and a lot of times the kids we were talking about could afford the school anyway.

He pointed out that if the school offers the kid ANY grant in aid money from the athletic department that kid can be admitted under the athletic dept criteria that is slightly lower than the standards for the general student population, plus the student is pretty much guaranteed admission. So the kid gets into an A+ school versus an A school.

Not really sure Divison III should even be included. Those kids pay their own way and sports make money for the colleges (heck they might net more than most D1 schools from athletics).

Also, the focus is on Ivy League schools, which already are predominantly white (in part due to admissions processes that disadvantage Asian-Americans in particular at least at Harvard.

Another factor is the focus on sports that are played at prestigious prep schools. Students from those schools likely have a better chance of getting into an Ivy than from a highly rated government school. Parents often send their kids to private schools for access to that world more than the academics. Brett Kavanaugh is a great example. Georgetown Prep (which has nothing to do with Georgetown U) is in Bethesda, MD. Bethesda has one of the best government school system in the country.

I am curious just how much the athletes at the Ivies are lowering the academic standards. I have met a few rowers from Ivies and those men and women were pretty damn smart.

But I think a key point is that youth sports are pricing people out and it is a significant number of people. I care little in this area about producing future professionals, but sports can bring a lot of positives to the table and also active kids have a strong tendency to be active adults and that could have a major impact on life expectancy and quality of life.

the430miler wrote:

Well here in the republic of texxxas we have rodeo as a college sport. No other place in the west has that

The following 10 college rodeo teams are the biggest and best in the sport and represent the top choices for many cowboys and cowgirls each year.

1. Walla Walla Community College Walla Walla, WA

2. Tarleton State University Stephenville, TX

3. University of Nevada-Las Vegas Las Vegas, NV

4. California Polytechnic State University san Luis Obispo, CA

5. Central Wyoming College Riverton, WY

6. New Mexico State University Las Cruces, NM

7. Weber State University Ogden, UT

8 Sam Houston State University Huntsville, TX

9 Mesalands Community College Tucumcari, NM

10 College of Southern Idaho Twin Falls, ID

Anyway, bass fishing is a better scholarship IMO.

Sliding Scale wrote:

It is incorrect to term athletics as affirmative action for whites; but it does correctly establish the troubling fact that youth sports are becoming too expensive.

Football and Track have diverse student participation because the primary recruting level is high school, the way it should be.

A lot of other sports practically require you to be members of expensive travel teams to be recruited.

I think soccer and lax are the worst but there other offenders.

Even school-based sports are having issues where the student (okay parents) are having to pay higher participation fees in some areas due to budget cuts in the past.

The emphasis on travel teams and early specialization are problematic in many, many ways.

John Utah wrote:

Let me get this straight. 61% of the athletes are white in the Ivy.

General population of the USA is in the ballpark of 72% white.

I'm not a mathematician, so what am I missing?

People who apply to college are not distributed evenly across the age groups. So looking at the "general population" as a benchmark does not make sense. You need to look at 18-20 (or whatever) age group, which is significantly less white.

The article is spot on. Where I live, people pay $18k a year to have their kids play on an elite volleyball team. It is a feeder to Stanford, SMU, Baylor and Duke and really talented girls get full rides to Div I state schools. The girls all get good grades and have competitive test scores. But volleyball boost them to the front of the line. And then there is a whole host of prep school/rich kid only sports like Lacrosse, Field Hockey, golf, tennis, rowing, and sailing. Even baseball is becoming a rich kid sport with all the coaching and elite teams that parents buy for their kids as soon as they get past t-ball. My boss's son played div 1 baseball at a private school. They would spend at least $15,000 every summer flying around the country going to all star games so his son could get scouted. The kid would not have gotten into the school he went to on grades alone.