eBook

The Game of Life

William G. Bowen, James L. Shulman

2011

Overview

The President of Williams College faces a firestorm for not allowing the women's lacrosse team to postpone exams to attend the playoffs. The University of Michigan loses $2.8 million on athletics despite averaging 110,000 fans at each home football game. Schools across the country struggle with the tradeoffs involved with recruiting athletes and updating facilities for dozens of varsity sports. Does increasing intensification of college sports support or detract from higher education's core mission? James Shulman and William Bowen introduce facts into a terrain overrun by emotions and enduring myths. Using the same database that informedThe Shape of the River, the authors analyze data on 90,000 students who attended thirty selective colleges and universities in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s. Drawing also on historical research and new information on giving and spending, the authors demonstrate how athletics influence the class composition and campus ethos of selective schools, as well as the messages that these institutions send to prospective students, their parents, and society at large. Shulman and Bowen show that athletic programs raise even more difficult questions of educational policy for small private colleges and highly selective universities than they do for big-time scholarship-granting schools. They discover that today's athletes, more so than their predecessors, enter college less academically well-prepared and with different goals and values than their classmates--differences that lead to different lives. They reveal that gender equity efforts have wrought large, sometimes unanticipated changes. And they show that the alumni appetite for winning teams is not--as schools often assume--insatiable. If a culprit emerges, it is the unquestioned spread of a changed athletic culture through the emulation of highly publicized teams by low-profile sports, of men's programs by women's, and of athletic powerhouses by small colleges. Shulman and Bowen celebrate the benefits of collegiate sports, while identifying the subtle ways in which athletic intensification can pull even prestigious institutions from their missions. By examining how athletes and other graduates view The Game of Life--and how colleges shape society's view of what its rules should be--Bowen and Shulman go far beyond sports. They tell us about higher education today: the ways in which colleges set policies, reinforce or neglect their core mission, and send signals about what matters.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: Academic achievement / Academic degree / Academic standards / Accounting / African Americans / Aims and objectives / Alumnus / Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women / Athletic director / Athletic scholarship / Attendance / Career / Class rank / Classroom / Coaching / College football / College recruiting / College sports / Competition / Competitiveness / Contemporary society / Credential / Curriculum / Doctor of Philosophy / EDUCATION / EDUCATION / Higher / Extracurricular activity / Freshman / Funding / Fundraising / Graduate school / Graduation / Head coach / Higher / Institution / Intramural sports / Ivy League / Liberal arts college / Liberal arts education / Major (academic) / National Collegiate Athletic Association / NCAA Division I / NCAA Division III / New England Small College Athletic Conference / Opportunity cost / Percentage / Percentile / Private university / Profession / Professionalization / Public university / Requirement / Revenue stream / Salary / SAT / Scholarship / Secondary school / Selective school / Self-confidence / Social science / Socioeconomic status / SPORTS & RECREATION / SPORTS & RECREATION / General / Stanford University / Student / Students' union / Title IX / Tufts University / Tuition payments / Tulane University / Undergraduate education / United States / University / University and college admission / University of Michigan / Williams College / Year
• ISBN: 9780691096193, 0691096198, 9781400840694, 1400840694