Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
There are a lot of problems with the Ivy League, the lack of athletic scholarships are one of the few things they do absolutely right. The thing is that athletics are less, not more democratic as a distribution mechanism for admission slots. The author seems to be under the mistaken belief that most of these slots would be available for your football and basketball players, where stories of rising from poverty are commonplace at the highest level. That's simply not the case at Ivies. You think underrepresented and the economically disadvantaged are rowing or playing squash or fencing or golfing or diving at the level where this would matter? Sure, there are ways of making this equitable, but that's not solved by the scope of this argument.
The fact is that athletics has been a backdoor for admissions, and always used to exclude, not to include, those outside the upper class. The college admission scandal showed as much, with the Stanford sailing coach. It has historical roots in excluding Jewish students, and it's currently used to exclude Asian students among maintaining a proportion of elite students.
Certainly, it looks like price fixing, and I don't have a problem with that argument, but I would prefer is more universities took courage to actually focus on academics like chicago, caltech, mit, etc.
I'm glad the Ivy (Penn) that I graduated from over thirty years ago was enlightened enough to admit good students regardless of whether they were Jewish. Or Asian.
> athletics has been a backdoor for admissions ... used to exclude ... those outside the upper class.
The student athlete I knew, my roommate Tony Tomaska, was the son of a Chicago policeman. He played for the football team. He was working class, not upper class.
>The student athlete I knew, my roommate Tony Tomaska, was the son of a Chicago policeman. He played for the football team. He was working class, not upper class.
Yeah I don't deny that a lot of athletes are from disadvantageous backgrounds, I was only to highlight that the sports we associate w/ that fact do not make up a lot of other sports in the ivy league, and that if your goal diversity, you should just increase admissions of disadvantaged students, not use athletics as a proxy.
how about "vestiges of old fashioned bias remain in the ivory tower" or something
I could see your point if the book wasn't talking about the 30s, but it was talking about the 30s.
Was this an Ivy League thing or a higher ed thing?
Much of the early 20th century was spent building US higher education around the German model.
but that golden age, having achieved remarkable success, is over. It was predicted by somebody-nobody-listened-to that strip-mining IQ and EQ talent from various communities and elevating them to elite status would leave behind communities more deeply impoverished and dysfunctional than they were before. And what is our politics today but that exact battle?
America, Canada and Australia benefited from being English colonies, but that's sort of tautological because they were originally colonies settled with English people, apart from indigenous peoples and later arrivals.
Hard to say if indigenous people are better off, certainly particular indigenous people have been worse off, and there's certainly the enduring popular romantic notion that being a hunter gatherer is peak evolution for us/them and the tiny sustainable populations of the nomadic invaders and such of several continents were entitled to be left alone to battle each other for supremacy while collectively hogging those resources for themselves, free from having to battle anybody else for them.
But personally, while descended from hunter gatherers, I'm glad I'm not a hunter gatherer myself (he said, typing on his silicon dream machine) though considering it, I would have made a great one tempermentally.
"Prior to deindustrialisation, India was one of the largest economies in the world, accounting for approximately one quarter of the global economy.... The Indian economy specialised in industrialisation and manufacturing, accounting for at least one quarter of the world's manufacturing output before the 18th century."
in 1900 it was 2%. There were huge famines under Colonial rule, the kind that would male Mao proud.
India is doing so much better now, its not even comparable.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-industrialisation_of_Indi...
What it does mean is that an excellent athlete from a rich family will choose Stanford over Harvard, because Stanford will pay them a scholarship even though they don't "need it." This is one reason why Stanford athletics are superior to those of Ivy League schools.
A more basic problem with "athletic scholarships" is that being an athlete has absolutely nothing to do with being an academic/scholar/student of something else.
It might be a good way to bring some publicity to the school, and to make it have a strong team. But it has absolutely nothing to do with a school's intended purpose (except the "make money" purpose).
Athletic scholarships should only be a thing in sports academies - where you're trained to be a coach, a PE teacher, or a related academic in some of those areas.
In fact, universities and colleges should just have clubs to play sports informally, at the same level they have a music playing club, or a gym, or a cooking club. Like in the rest of the civilized (on that matter at least) world.
You bond and make lifelong friends. Also a great place to find a partner for life.
Athletic departments are vital to the university system in American schools and their local economies.
Yes. That should stop.
>Athletic departments are vital to the university system in American schools and their local economies.
That too.
We should definitely dump athletic departments, though, they are completely unrelated to the mission.
That leads to product bundling you describe, which should be vigorously fought with antitrust laws.
I love the honesty in this thread, higher Eds main value prop, outside of stem, has been the connections made.
However, no one to my knowledge has validate that assumption and my gut is telling me it's probably BS for the majority of people.
Let's see how that holds up when QE doesn't come back. IMO it's mostly around deal flow and finance where this plays out and I'd guess the percentage is very small that walk away with that value.
I love sports and I think we need more opportunities for recreational play of sports after high school. But I just don't get the point of schools with middling varsity teams in unpopular sports continuing to pour resources into those teams.
I'd love to know if there are good reasons for it I'm missing though.
This is fine and dandy for up to middling levels of achievement. But universities have no business being in professional sports. They do have a business accommodating professional athletes of a variety of sports, but that's where the mid-level sports clubs come in: enough decent facilities to stay in shape, but not required to provide Olympic-level of training.
If sports clubs want to aim higher, it's up to their (student-run) board to get there. Basically: universities should provide decent facilities, not run the teams.
No, athletic departments are not vital for the above social secondary benefits of an education, just one of the hundreds others out there providing bonds and lifelong friends without this level of special treatment. For educational and academic purpose of universities it is even less vital, a tiny tiny fraction of the educated people rely vitally on this receiving good education throughout the history and around the world. If it was gone it was not missed much, mostly by athletics not graduates, academics and educators.
All I read here is “it’s a great tool for social reproduction and stratification”. This is dystopian. We’ve seen what this mindset gave with Oxbridge, and it is toxic.
It is only vital in the sense that people have vested interests in it, but it's not to the benefit of the students.
Most college athletes will not play at the professional level. Their young adult connections and the values they develop as being part of a team to overcome great challenges in preparation and on game day are important to our society. The stress one feels for a final exam does not compare to the emotions one feels on a big game-day! Valuable mental models are developed from athletics. Lessons learned are applied to every industry. it’s important simulation.
To deduce it all to irrelevance is a mistake that many intelligent people with no team or sporting experience often make to no fault of their own.
Being an athlete isn’t particularly different than getting a minor or a dual major. Just because there’s sweating involved doesn’t make it not a scholarly pursuit, we should stop being such gatekeepers.
From a certain perspective there is little that separates sports from a lot of arts majors. Someone studying acting is very unlikely to turn that into a profession just like a football player. Why does running around on a field have less intellectual value than doing make believe on a stage? They are both glorified hobbies. If someone can study one as a major, why not the other?
I expect that most arts majors have at least 1% doing that thing.
They may not be rock stars, but I expect that 1% of music majors are at least playing, be it local orchestras or bands or live or canned music (jingles, etc.).
I meant more the fact that even at least one of the pro sports leagues tries to remind even people who are doing extremely well in the sport, that as well as they've done, that next step as a player is going to be even harder. So to not neglect things in single-minded pursuit of "I'm going to the NBA" (because you're probably not).
Sure, but the next step of going from drama school to a professional actor is also extremely hard. There may not be a central authority like the NBA directly stating that to college kids, but most people won't be able to make that transition either.
In a culture that asks this question seriously, "intellectual value" might not be needed in general (except in some specific niches)
You do understand the definition of "intellectual", as in "intellectual pursuit"?
And how it is meant to specifically exclude physical activity and things like sports (except if you include something like chess as a sport)?
-relating to your ability to think and understand things, especially complicated ideas
-very educated and interested in studying and other activities that involve careful thinking and mental effort
What do you find intellectual about acting or chess? The same almost assuredly applies to football, but it can be difficult to see if you don't even give sports any consideration in that regard.
You seem to be dismissing the mental aspects of sports because of the physicality involved, but physicality is a huge part of acting and even chess puts huge physical stress on one's body. People have literally died playing chess due to the physical stress. Subjects don't fall into a binary categorization of physical or mental. Sports, like many disciplines of art, requires both to varying degrees.
[1] - https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/intel...
Welcome to 1910.
> It might be a good way to bring some publicity to the school, and to make it have a strong team. But it has absolutely nothing to do with a school's intended purpose (except the "make money" purpose).
It engages people who care about sports but don't really care about the research being performed there. Most people attending universities never get an advanced degree. I wouldn't even consider a JD or MBA an advanced degree so much as a professional certificate masquerading as advanced education.
> Athletic scholarships should only be a thing in sports academies - where you're trained to be a coach, a PE teacher, or a related academic in some of those areas.
Meanwhile, former athletes who were able to attend universities due to athletics and have since become wealthy regularly donate millions to their alma maters.
> In fact, universities and colleges should just have clubs to play sports informally, at the same level they have a music playing club, or a gym, or a cooking club. Like in the rest of the civilized (on that matter at least) world.
Well, it turns out that universities are full of educated people and they've run the numbers. The numbers say that athletics are an attraction to universities for students and alumni alike.
Is that an argument? The "newer is better" kind? Perhaps 1910 had that part figured out better than 2023.
>Well, it turns out that universities are full of educated people and they've run the numbers. The numbers say that athletics are an attraction to universities for students and alumni alike.
I never argued it doesn't make them money or that the bean counters there can't see that.
Just that it's (or oughta be) unrelated with the goals of an academic institution, whether it's lucrative or not.
The NCAA has been around and has regulated athletic scholarships in its current form since 1910. They're the ones who stepped in and said that athletes needed to be students at the universities they represented. That's good for the universities AND good for the athletes.
> I never argued it doesn't make them money or that the bean counters there can't see that.
> Just that it's (or oughta be) unrelated with the goals of an academic institution, whether it's lucrative or not.
Then you don't have any more universities aside from a few flagships and deeply endowed private institutions, because they have fundamentally different objectives than they did at the beginning of last century.
I knew intellectually that college athletes were coddled academically and while it's hard not to root for the individuals depicted in the documentary to succeed it's also hard not to think that there must be dozens of kids at the schools where they come from that were more academically inclined and could have made better use of the resources provided to the student athletes.
Last Chance U is great and a great insight, I really enjoy the show, and get heart broken for these kids. You can't really get schaudenfraude when they fail like other shows or dramas.
But there's a few things you may not have caught, which seems to be the same across most college sports and just exacerbates as you become more competitive/make more cash like a D1 school.
When I was in season I spent 5-8 hours a day on the sport. 3 hours for practice, 1-2 hours reading scouting reports, in rehab, working out, or watching film. On game day it was a good 8 hours if we weren't traveling, a full day if we were (longest bus ride was 7.5 h each way). We calculated that we spent around 3600 hours in sports over 4 years. That's over a part time job and nearing full time job while working.
This makes it real hard to get to normal tutoring sessions which are in the afternoon many places. Or to labs, or office hours, etc. At my school the athletic department (ad) just got the big classes to setup tutoring sessions in the athletic complex (ac). They were open to anyone actually. But we had better discipline (a coach would sit in on many sessions and deal with any disruptions) and better hours so we got some of the best tutors to show up. My physics 101 tutor had to move to the gym he was so popular.
Now move to Last Chance U... kids who have been failed in many ways by high schools who didn't teach them, parents, themselves, or just not being quite good enough to "make it" but not ready to realize that. They need a ton of help. This is very much the last chance for these kids at ball or making it through that avenue. Making it via sports is what 80% of these kids think is literally their only option. Tho there's the lineman in the first season was like "it'll get me a degree and out of the factory."
But if you pay attention, most of those sessions the players are at, they're for all of the students, who also have guidance counselors. The difference is just that the Athletic Department pays for a guidance counselor, and the coach is a surrogate parent for these kids (who happens to work there), and the GC and the coaches, they talk and these kids have to stay eligible to play or to go to the school. Normal students can ignore the GC, and fail out, and they're not on TV. The players can't.
If you haven't played school sports or don't have kids who play sports, a coach can often wield more influence over a kid than parents can. My friend just immigrated, his kid was playing sports, and my friend was lamenting his kid was slacking off. I suggested he email the coach. That evening the kid apologized to his dad and set up a study schedule he showed his dad and his grades went up a letter over the next month. Basically the coach brought the kid to his office during study hour and said "you're going to run a lot and your play time is going to go down if you don't get your grades back up." that's all it took. As a regular parent generally if you said "go run till you puke or realize you should get your grades up" you'd get laughed at.
I heard a (possibly apocryphal) story. One of Tony Dungy's kids was playing high school football, and was just grabbing a slice of toast for breakfast. Tony tells him "you need a bigger meal with protein before practice."
A week later he sees his son getting up early to make a big breakfast, and comments on it. His son says "yeah, coach told me I need to eat more"
I turned down Harvard many years ago for not offering athletics scholarships-- I could not reasonably afford school any other way. And, I was laughed at for years by those in the know of the "need based" assistance framework. One thing that made it unaffordable in my case was they wanted a year of prep school on top of high school which definitely is exclusionary. But, if a Bloomberg contributor can fail to see a pathway equivalent to a scholarship for someone who financially cannot attend any other way, I'd say there is something to the author's grievance.
Interesting, what was the prep school? My school required 4 years of math/science in HS which is a thing many US schools don't require but if you're a top student you can go for. One kid I played with only had 2 years of HS. He spent the whole summer on campus from like 3 days after HS graduation to 3 days into football taking stats, physics, chemistry, and college algebra to get him up to snuff. I think that may be similar to the prep you're talking about. He ended up doing fine (average grades) in the B school, and I believe is a arson investigator now.
I was admitted to a college because I was really interested in a major they started offering and wanted to promote.
I just got one of my children admitted to a very selective private school because “wanted” to participate in a program they had just begun.
Schools always have programs and initiatives they are pushing, and give preference to students who want to use them.
* in the case of my college, I knew what I wanted, and was shopping around for it. The major was a very unusual one - not even a major as much as a program (“great books”).
* in the case of my daughter, I knew the school because I had taught there decades ago.
* there are admissions consultants who keep track of these sorts of things and make it a point to know all the side doors.
At the end of the day, colleges admissions should be about matching students and colleges who fit together. If a student isn’t as competitive, but is still a great fit, they should I get extra points for that.
But this can be come a system those with money abuse. But that abuse takes the form of lying about whether they are a good fit for the college they are going to - which is dumb.
If a student gets into Harvard by saying they really want to pursue the newly introduced degree of “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” - is Harvard really a good fit?
Tangent: take certain physical education courses at MIT and you can get a 'unofficial' pirate certificate:
> An underground campus custom has become an official and increasingly famous part of MIT culture. Although student pirates have roamed campus informally for decades, in 2011 the Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (DAPER) began issuing MIT pirate certificates to students who completed specific requirements. Six students earned the inaugural certificates and, today, 354 MIT students and alumni have received certificates at a spring ritual—Pirate Induction Day.
* https://alum.mit.edu/slice/arrrr-mit-pirates-and-matt-damon-...
> The MIT Pirate Certificate became available in the Fall of 2011. Students who have completed Archery, Fencing, Pistol (Air Pistol or Rifle) and Sailing should send an email to […]
* https://physicaleducationandwellness.mit.edu/about/pirate-ce...
> The need for diversity in education is as vital today as ever. But it’s not clear whether the Ivy Agreement’s ban on athletic scholarships actually promotes that end. One might even wonder whether, by not competing over sports stars, the schools are reducing the diversity of their student bodies.
Yet later admits:
> But recent research tells us that fielding a great team predicts higher alumni giving only to the athletics department. And a 2005 study found little connection between on-field success and giving, at least among those alums who regularly attended sporting events.
Higher education became corrupted with money from athletics and I wish more schools took note of:
> In the Ivy Group Agreement, the universities defend their ban on athletic scholarships as part of a general policy “that the players shall be truly representative of the student body and not composed of a group of specially recruited athletes.”
There are some athletic scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, but they're not at all mainstream in the way athletics seems to be in the US.
There's also Track and Field, which generally you can do cheaply and anywhere.
After that you start getting restrictions on where you can do them and what it costs to do them. So obvioulsy they'll be done more by the "elite"
Other college sports:
Hockey: Quite expensive gear, ice time. Maybe in Canada? In the US football pays for all the gear, in much of the US you buy your own hockey gear for like $1k.
Tennis: These days maybe not as elite, can be quite accessible, but historically quite elite.
Golf: Golf actually has a huge blue collar contingent, but still seems pretty elite.
Swimming: You need a pool, you need heat or an indoor pool, likely regionally dependent on elite vs accessible.
Wrestling: you can do this anywhere, I never see it in a public park. Well, most of the time.
Field Hockey / Lacross: These are new england elite sports for the most part. Wish I played LAX in HS actually, would have been less fat.
Skiing: Access, expensive equipment. Heck the northeast doesn't even have good ski slopes.
Sailing/Equestrian: lol, $$$$ for the "vehicle" and you need land or access to a large body of water, both quite spendy.
In other words, it doesn't get expensive until after your kid has really decided they want to do it.
It is not a problem of an individual school refusing to give academic scholarships.
Instead the problem is the schools all agreeing together to do this.
By all means, let each university individually choose if they want to allow scholarships or not, with zero agreement between the schools.
I don't understand the linked article (or your) point about this being some sort of illegal collusion. Can you help me understand how this is fundamentally different from an HOA enforcing things like "no boat parking"?
why would they open themselves up to those kinds of expenses and liabilities when their feeder systems are working just fine for them now?
The ATP & WTA would take issue with that claim.
because they don't have a grueling sport.
There are hundreds of schools or more that _do_ compete for consumers in that way. Similarly, HOAs in some areas may restrict boat parking. Other HOAs however, will allow it. Why is the metaphor not appropriate?
Whether or not a couple houses in a couple block area, or 1 apartment building all "collude" to do something has very little effect on the competitive market of the massive housing industry.
But large, major players in the education space (each of which enrolls thousands of students), all agreeing together to do something, has a much larger effect, in comparison.
This is not correct. There are HOAs spanning dozens of miles, with and tens of thousands of homes.
>But large, major players in the education space (each of which enrolls thousands of students), all agreeing together to do something, has a much larger effect, in comparison.
The vast majority of universities offer athletic scholarships, this is not really true either.
Primary function of a univerisy is the education market.
It is shocking to see the nunber of 'free market' advocates that do not understand basic functions of a market
This is a horrible comparison. Ivy league schools are competiting businesses in a market. Much different than a group of homes, which really aren't directly competing in a market.
(even though, I am sure you can twist an argument that they are. They really aren't. Most people are not trying to sell their homes, and there are a lot of homes all around the world. 'market collusion' between a couple homes not a big deal compared to huge businesses doing it).
> from an HOA enforcing things like "no boat parking"?
Because 1 ivy league school should have no business forcing a different school on the other side of the country on how they run their business, thats why.
Thats market collusion.
Fortunately, all the Ivy League schools are on the same side, in same corner even, of the country.
Because houses in the same HOA are literally right next to each other. Like a block away, whereas the same is not true for schools.
There are HOAs with tens of thousands of homes, spanning dozens of miles, this is not true.
Still has a significantly smaller effect on the market than a bunch of education institutions coming together to collude.
The education systems aren't even next to each other either. They don't have any business controlling other schools.
At least there is some nominal justification for a house to control their neighbors house, given that it is a living community.
I do not think that education systems as an entire system have the same justification to control one another.
Instead, they should compete in the market.
Citation needed. Again, the vast majority of Division 1 schools offer athletic scholarship. Where is this large collusion effect?
I am not sure if you were aware, but there are a lot of houses in the world.
In comparison, there aren't nearly as many high end, elite educational institutions.
I think that you are more than capable of finding a citation yourself that proves that there are quite a lot more houses in the world, than there are top educational institutions.
>In comparison, there aren't nearly as many high end, elite educational institutions.
The college enrollment rate is under 70%, and I am not sure if you were aware, but the percentage of people in homes is much greater than this.
I mean, you just proved the point I was making. High-end, elite, Division 1 schools overwhelmingly offer athletic scholarships, vs not offering them. Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, and UC Berkeley have greater student enrollment than all the ivy leagues combined. People always try to do mental gymnastics with some "any non-Ivy League is by definition not an elite school" but using any objective ranking measure, just add Georgetown, UCLA, Notre Dame, UNC, Michigan, and suddenly the enrollment of athletic-scholarship-offering schools are >10x that of the ones that don't offer them.
You're making rather wild unsubstantiated claims at this point ("# houses > # schools == ivy leagues have greater impact") after repeatedly failing to demonstrate how HOA is not a good analogy to this situation. Comically these claims are completely false - over 25% of the USA lives in HOA communities, but nowhere near that many D1 schools (and even less by enrollment) does not offer athletic scholarships. Congrats, you inadvertently proved that Ivies not giving academic scholarships has a negligible effect, especially compared to housing.
You actually think that 25% of the US population live in the same exact HOA?
What is the singular HOA that currently covers 100 million people?
If 25% of the US housing market agreed to literally the exact same agreement, then yes, that would be an appropriate analogy.
Is that why you thought this was an equivalent analogy? Because you actually thought that 100 million people had agreed to the same market agreement?
The courts didn't care what they were colluding about, just that they were colluding. If they independently come to the same decision, that's one thing, just like an oil company following the price decisions of another one is fine, but the two of them agreeing to raise prices is not.
It can be both true that the collusion is legally shaky—I’m not disputing that—and the author has an axe to grind.
I believe the writer wants a particular outcome for reasons beyond just forbidding collusion.
Finally it’s also true that the DoE’s national accreditation can forbid athletic scholarships.
I personally believe it should, if we want higher education to be about cultivating knowledge and intellect again.
It may even drive out the big business that college sports has become, along with the administrative bloat to support it.
Because monopolistic collision is bad, that's why.
Not just illegal. Also bad.
> if we want higher education to be about cultivating knowledge and intellect again.
If an individual college wants to get rid of all it's sports programs, or scholarships, or whatever, and decides to do that individually, then they should go ahead.
What they shouldn't do, though, is try and force all the other colleges to do the same thing, with monopolistic agreements.
To repeat, if a individual college wants to not have athletic scholarships, fine.
But no agreement that forces all the other colleges to do the same thing.
Let each college, individually decide how much they want to focus on this, instead of having monopolistic agreements.
The moral outcome the author is promoting isn't about anti-collusion, but diversity: "The need for diversity in education is as vital today as ever. But it’s not clear whether the Ivy Agreement’s ban on athletic scholarships actually promotes that end. One might even wonder whether, by not competing over sports stars, the schools are reducing the diversity of their student bodies."
Except, the author admits later that athletic programs simply promote more athletics and the claims of diversity through athletics is dubious.
Does any other country have that?
Edit: examples https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2019...
Is it really a literary resume for people that didn't have the time to accomplish anything yet? I just found a niche for chatGPT!
The UK UCAS admission system used for all undergraduate admissions requires an application text. It is much freer in its form than how I understand the US system with a very specific prompt.
As for Norway, to pick another random example, there is no requirement to submit any piece of writing to explain your motivation. Your grades do all the talking for you, so to speak.
Honestly i much prefer the US system to my exposure to the british system, much easier to apply to multiple schools in the US
I think discouraging blanket applications to multiple universities is the point of the UCAS system in the UK
Many European countries have special programs for sports talents to develop and receive economic benefits whilst serving military service and/or seeking higher education. Most people don't know anything about these programs as they are not advertised or generally published.
it may be the case that the wealth and elitism of "growing up rowing", like "growing up sailing, horseback riding, and playing polo and squash" is sufficient to to keep out the riffraff and the highly athletic boats crewed with also academically gifted rowers; but humans both group identify and are athletically highly competitive, even as spectators, and there's no way you can have world class talent in a sport without either combing the hustings for talent, or keeping "those people" out altogether. Oxford and Cambridge are not magically different than every other place in the world, they are magically the same. If they are good at it, then there's an explanation for it, and it's not "being good at fluid dynamics turns out to make you a great rower".
For example, the Ivy League in American sports is not the elite level of sports in any sport that matters economically, but only because they're only willing to bend the academic rules so far and they restrict competition to other like minded opponents (but they do bend the rules because they care enough to do so).
So either: Oxford and Cambridge aren't world class at rowing; nobody rows outside Oxford Cambridge and some other similarly elitist schools; or they're bending some rules to obtain elite talent.
For the UK it is this.
Oh, you aren't blowing money on ancillary things like big time college football and other academics-undermining activiites? Sounds like a smart move by the Ivy League.
The Ivys have been admitting scions and the like under the table? You don't say. Does that provide the Ivys with prominent influential alumni and the like? Yep. Is EVERYONE else with even a remotely significant reputation doing this with rich Chinese and others? I know all the Big10 is.
Christ, the CARTEL is the NCAA not paying EMPLOYEES what likely is 1? 10? 100? 1000? BILLIONS that could have been made by revenue NCAA athletes over the last 50 years. Now THAT is a cartel worth writing about. In football, they likely left a million students or more with lifelong injuries with no healthcare or compensation that played big time football for the bowl schools.
Columbia does a bit of defection on the side that is tolerated, but otherwise there are no merit scholarships for Ivy league students.
I was never going to make it into an Ivy anyway, but I remember learning about that system as a middle-class high school kid and thinking "huh, sucks for me I guess." Too rich for need-based scholarships, too poor to pay full price.
No, that is just branding. If these institutions were truly based on merit the legacy system wouldn't exist.
It is also unclear the extent to which legacy programs influence admissions. Legacy applicants have higher acceptance rates, but we would likely also expect this in a situation where there was no preference for legacy admission.
You can look at Yale's details here: https://finaid.yale.edu/costs-affordability/affordability ... e.g. virtually all families earning less than $75K per year will get a full-ride plus a $2,000 grant in the first year.
Are you seriously criticizing the Ivies decision to prioritize scholarships on the basis of financial need?
and some middle class parents with two kids need to sell house to cover tuition?..
That is competitive with many in-state tuitions.
Princeton, for instance, is capable of letting in every student for free, and still not dipping into their endowment [0]. Why don't they do so? Because it would lead to lower tuitions across the board, and that's intolerable.
> if you're admitted, then you're going to get whatever amount of scholarship you need to go.
No, you get whatever amount of scholarship they think you need to go. Their understanding of your financial situation will be unsurprisingly self-serving.
[0] https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/princeton-university-is...
I don’t even really understand the point about merit scholarships. Surely the purpose of a merit scholarship is to help someone who can’t afford to go to a school but who is academically outstanding? If you’re doing need-blind admissions and financial aid, that’s the empty set, isn’t it? Since everyone who is admitted can afford to go?
As to your last point, please go take a look at that Yale page I attached to the last post and tell me that you think the scholarship amounts look unfair to higher income households.
I'm not saying everyone deserves a merit scholarship—but if the point of university is to nurture the best and brightest, then the best and brightest shouldn't have to pay such exorbitant fees. Afterall, they're the reason the colleges maintain their sterling academic reputations.
If you have a household income of 250k—of which your take home is ~160k—and Columbia subtracts another 90k, that leaves you with 70k to pay for everything else. In expensive locales, that's not nearly enough to pay for the education of two children without mortgaging your house. If said best and brightest are unable to attend due to such circumstances, a merit scholarship seems in order—otherwise, you, as a college, are admitting that money means more to you than education, and that you're willing to take someone who isn't nearly as good (there's a reason you didn't admit them initially) simply because they're capable of paying. Not everyone who is admitted can afford to attend at the price of admission demanded by these colleges. Again, I speak from experience.
No, that’s not the purpose of a merit scholarship. A merit scholarship is to encourage someone of merit to go to your school in particular by providing them money
Better to just offer according to needs.
1. A group of smart people to sustain the academics and ranking.
2. A group of elites to benefit from the brand mostly created by step 1.
3. Adding some diversity to shut up complaints, for political correctness too.
After graduation they help each other to keep the brand, for those who become more "successful", they donate back to keep this pattern strong and probably feed their own next generations to step 2 above.
I find this particularly interesting:
"But the 3rd Circuit’s 1993 rationale isn’t helpful to the Ivies today. Back then, the court rejected the government’s accusation that the schools’ cooperation on financial aid increased tuition for other students. But subsequent work has concluded that the government was probably right."
Over the past 30 years, universities have absolutely continued to raise tuition and fees beyond the rate of inflation. They have increased the size of university administrations and enhanced campus facilities and services to some extent, but the educational benefit isn't as clear, while student loan debt has ballooned.
Tuition at Yale (for example) was about $15K in 1993 (equivalent to around $31K today.) In 2023 Yale's tuition is more than $64K.
I'd like to hear Yale's explanation of how this is possibly sensible.
you have to have a very affluent family to pay full sticker at Yale or Harvard.
Yale currently takes in some $475 million in tuition, room and board. In 1990 the number was $165M, equivalent to about $378M today.
At 14,567 students that's 32,607 each. Website says tuition is 59,950.
Grad students are still paid poorly however, especially when one considers the amount of money the research they perform brings into the university.
I suspect many of their football programs barely, if at all support themselves with the income they have for that given sport.
I doubt their other sports are much more profitable...
So what then? Force them to offer athletic scholarships?
I feel like this lawsuit is trying to squeeze blood from a stone.
Which is why the government goes after the mafia, they hate the competition.
One interesting limit case is what happens if everyone is a member of such a criminal organization? There’s no practical difference between a government.
https://www.econtalk.org/omer-moav-on-the-emergence-of-the-s...
Henry Hill : [narrating] All they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. That's what it's all about. That's what the FBI can never understand - that what Paulie and the organization offer is protection for the kinds of guys who can't go to the cops.
It must be really difficult living in an area of the world where the Government tortures your child, dismembers them with a chainsaw, and dissolves them in a barrel of acid if you don't pay your taxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupara_bianca#Examples
:(
But thousands of times more gruesome than that!? That's wild. I've watched Cartel vids where they slice open and expose the vocal cords laterally as their victims wail, creating otherworldly sounds.
But that's like... MAYBE 0.5x as gruesome as torturing some poor helpless child or tossing infant into a barrel of acid. So if you've got stuff that's 1000x as gruesome, I can't even comprehend! Please post.
The scale at which modern governments operate makes all of organized crime look like child's play. The quote "A single death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" Is particularly apt here.
I think the scale of the brutality matters a lot, and governments can get bigger scale.
But, the Mongol government creating mountains of skulls that appear to travelers in the distance to be snow covered mountains with such a trail of human remains that the “grease” renders their horses immobile is pretty darn brutal.
> Author is biased, probably couldn't get to one of those schools...
Ad hominem attack, but I was amused even though the facts don't precisely support the accusation.
It is technically true that Prof. Carter didn't attend an Ivy League school as an undergraduate - he went to Stanford, which (currently) plays in the Pac-12 and NCAA division I. Of course that doesn't tell us whether he received admission offers from any of the Ivies at that time - it seems likely that he would have.
But the reason I rate the implication "false" is because he subsequently attended and graduated from Yale's law school and currently teaches there.
Sometimes people forget that the Ivy League isn't a classification of elite schools but actually an athletic conference; this is of course directly relevant to the issue of athletic scholarships which is under discussion.
... and it discriminates against the poor?
It is quite an amazing psycho-social phenomena, inextricably linked to a low SES and impoverished social capital; I hope to secure a grant to make my PhD students shit out a bunch of papers with my name on it soon.
Don't worry, all the confounding variables have been accounted for. We can't release any raw data though, so sorry but it's to protect confidentiality. Could we reasonably anonymize the data? Oh nooooo, I'm so sorry you're breaking u --
Is there price fixing going on? Probably. But I don’t have very much sympathy for student athletes who had to pay full price to go to an Ivy league school… I’m sure they had more opportunities in life than the cartels give they people the rule over.
The word "cartel" is not exclusive to the criminal Mexican organizations.
> I’m sure they had more opportunities in life
But that reasoning applies to academic scholarships too. Every single person smart enough to get into a top school, will have more opportunities throughout life.
2. Renaming the technical term would not do anything to help the victims of drug cartels (in Mexico or otherwise.) That would be textbook slacktivism.