After annus horribilis 2011, no one can deny with a straight face the corrupting effect of our athletics-business complex on higher education. We need to reckon, however, with the toll that college athletics and all its trappings take on high-school education as well.
They aren’t necessarily wrong. The number of athletics scholarships has remained largely flat over the past 20 years, although the dollar amount—about $2-billion in athletically related financial aid is awarded each year in Divisions I and II, according to the NCAA—has grown a good bit faster than inflation. But as William Bowen and his colleagues have demonstrated in several books, athletics programs have distorted the admissions process even at selective colleges and universities that do not offer athletics scholarships. Looking at a group of such institutions, the authors found that recruited athletes are as much as four times more likely to gain admission than are other applicants with similar academic credentials. No wonder high-school students and their parents pursue sports.
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