How does the Game of Life Play at Liberal Arts Institutions?
In their widely-cited book The Game of Life, James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen studied the effects of intercollegiate athletics and intercollegiate athletes on various aspects of the mission and academic character of institutions of higher learning. In our view, Shulman and Bowen’s most important findings concern the academic accomplishments of athletes during their college careers. Specifically, Shulman and Bowen concluded that varsity athletes who lettered in their sports:
- entered college with considerably lower SAT scores than non–athletes.
- graduated at high rates despite their low SAT scores.
- were far more likely to graduate in the lower 1/3 of their graduating class.
- tended to major in certain academic disciplines, especially business and the social sciences.
We gathered and analyzed data from 10 liberal arts colleges and nearly 13,000 students to determine whether Shulman and Bowen’s conclusions about the poor academic performance of student-athletes were valid in a group of selective Division III liberal arts colleges.
Our Conclusions:
- A significant portion of the students at the colleges in our sample participate in intercollegiate athletics, although men are still much more likely (42%) to participate in athletics than women (24%).
- Students who participate in intercollegiate athletics typically enter college with somewhat lower SAT scores than students who do not. These differences are largest, about 120 points, for men who play basketball and football. Overall, athletes have notably higher four-year graduation rates than non-athletes. This difference is especially striking for students who are achieving lower grades in college.
- Among graduating students, athletes’ academic performance was lower than that of non-athletes. However, this difference is small; literally the difference between scoring an 85 and an 87 on an exam. To put it in a different way, the group of athletes in our sample with the lowest average academic performance, high profile male athletes, graduated with a B average.
- The difference in the grades of graduating athletes and non-athletes results, in part, because athletes with lower grades are more likely to stay in school and graduate, while non-athletes with lower grades are less likely to graduate.
- We did not find systematic evidence that student-athletes were underperforming relative to their SAT scores and high school percentile ranks.
- Student-athletes who receive varsity letters perform better academically and are more likely to graduate than student-athletes who do not earn varsity letters.
- Finally, there are some differences in the kinds of majors that student athletes choose, especially among male athletes.
You can find the full text of the study in HTML by clicking
HERE.
You can find a more detailed review of the evidence in and implications of the book "The Game of Life" in this review by Robert Horton and Charles Blaich.
The Game of Life (pdf)
