In January, a book by James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen, "The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values," reached several conclusions that challenged many of those assumptions. Among the authors' conclusions that pertain to Division III were that student-athletes receive admissions advantages because of their athlete status; that student-athletes academically underperform their nonathlete peers; and, because so many members of the student body are varsity athletes in Division III, student-athletes and their accompanying "athletics culture" could have a variety of negative effects on many prestigious Division III schools.

While many athletics administrators and educators in Division III may not necessarily agree with the authors' conclusions, everyone agrees on one point: All of Division III is talking about "The Game of Life."

Controversial conclusions

Bowen formerly was president of Princeton University, where he also was professor of economics. Both authors state in the book that they are not opponents of sports, and that seems borne out by their past involvement: Bowen was captain of his varsity men's tennis team at Denison University, and Shulman was active in intramurals at Yale University.

However, some "myths" pertain just as much, if not more, to Division III. Those include beliefs that "good schools can play the game differently" and "today's athletes are like those of the past."

The authors' data are drawn from the same database that the authors used for "The Shape of the River," which analyzed the effectiveness of affirmative-action programs in college admissions. The authors analyzed data on 90,000 students who attended 30 highly selective colleges and universities in the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s. That data collection, called the College and Beyond (C&B) data, was gathered by The Mellon Foundation.

Among the 30 schools in the C&B collection are three Division III universities: Emory University, Tufts University and Washington University (Missouri); seven schools that the authors identify as Division III coeducational liberal arts colleges: Denison, Hamilton College, Kenyon College, Oberlin College, Swarthmore College, Wesleyan University (Connecticut), and Williams College; and three Division III women's colleges: Bryn Mawr College, Smith College and Wellesley College.

Among the authors' conclusions affecting Division III institutions were the following:

Athletics is a much more serious business, in terms of its direct impact on admissions and the composition of the student body, at Division III and Ivy Group schools than it is at a classic Division I institution. (Division III schools, which typically offer a broad-based program of athletics and also have modest enrollments, have a much greater percentage of their student body participating in intercollegiate athletics than do Division I schools.)

Division III schools tend to follow practices and patterns established at other levels, albeit with a lag. Such trends as student-athlete specialization in one sport, the expectation of year-round practices and workouts, and "keeping up with the Joneses" by building ever-larger facilities have arrived at Division III institutions.

Student-athletes underperform academically, both when measured against their peers and when measured against what their own test scores indicate they ought to achieve, even at highly selective Division III schools. This academic underperformance is now found among lower-profile sports and among women's teams.

This underperformance also is seen when comparing student-athletes to other students who devote a great deal of time to extracurricular activities, such as the campus newspaper.

This underperformance, though accompanied by high graduation rates and high SAT scores, may indicate that student-athletes are taking up admissions spots at these selective schools that the authors assert would be better used by individuals who do not participate in varsity athletics.

Even though student-athletes in Division III do not receive athletics scholarships, and perhaps even because of that and the possibility of needing to replace "walk-offs" who have no financial incentive to remain with their teams, Division III student-athletes are highly recruited. Athletes who are recruited and who end up on the lists of desired candidates submitted by coaches to the admissions offices, the authors argue, have a substantial statistical advantage in the admissions process.

Winning football teams at Division III institutions had a significant effect on alumni donations. That was not true of the Division I schools studied, and the authors hypothesize that this anomaly may be because such a large proportion of the student body at Division III institutions is composed of recruited athletes.

While athletes were more likely to rate themselves highly as leaders, both before and after college, they were no more likely than other students to become CEOs, earn top salaries in professional fields such as law and medicine or to be leaders in most civic activities.

Impact of the 'athletics culture'

Even the authors were taken aback.

"I don't think we were surprised at the intensification in the Ivys, for example, but I think we were surprised that it had reached the women's colleges and the liberal arts colleges," Shulman said. "We had included the women's colleges and the liberal arts colleges (in the analysis) because we wanted to be able to say, 'Here's a group of schools where it's different.' And, the patterns were very similar across the board. The SAT scores were obviously higher, but the patterns were similar throughout, with the women starting to follow suit."

One of those patterns that most concerns Shulman is that athletes at all levels seem to be identifying themselves as athletes first and students second, thus leading to academic underperformance and what Shulman and Bowen refer to as an "athletics culture" that may not value academics as much as athletics. Shulman pointed to their finding that student-athletes underperformed academically, even when compared to say, campus newspaper editors.

"Part of (the underachieving) is going to be about time, travel and all that. But it's also about priorities," Shulman said, noting that the book cites the work of two other scholars, Deborah Prentice and Nancy Cantor, who have studied the priorities of student-athletes. Prentice and Cantor reported that student-athletes describe themselves as "more ambitious, more social, and, not surprisingly, healthier, but less academically focused."

Prentice and Cantor also noted that athletes reported spending less time in high school studying, doing work for pay, doing volunteer work and participating in clubs and groups while spending more time exercising, playing sports, socializing with friends and partying.

Said Shulman, "There is some indication that athletes who underperform academically disidentify with the academic mission of the school on a number of levels."

Because so many highly qualified students are seeking admissions at these highly selective institutions and because the student-athletes seem to be underperforming academically and not identifying with the institutions' academic missions, Shulman and Bowen suggested that perhaps institutions should refocus their admissions process. At one time, institutions looked for well-rounded people. Now the emphasis seems to be on a well-rounded class. So, an institution might have a stellar flute player, a chemist and a lacrosse player -- all with a résumé of outstanding accomplishments and all with high SAT scores. Shulman and Bowen might say the lacrosse player is the odd one out.

"I think one of the things about our book, in terms of Division III, is that people think we are demonizing the kids who play sports," Shulman said. "We're not saying that anyone is a bad person. What we're talking about is policies, not people. We're not saying that kid (the athlete) doesn't belong there. What we are saying is that Wesleyan only has so many slots. And, incentives really work. If the best way to get into Wesleyan is to be good at lacrosse, then students are going to spend more time on that than on chemistry. Do you want the chemist or the lacrosse player? And, how many future chemists don't get admission because you're favoring the lacrosse player?"

"If you listen to the kids at Swarthmore, it's pretty obvious. They were there to play football -- at Swarthmore, of all places. Now imagine how many kids were terribly disappointed, not because they don't get to play football, but because they never even got into Swarthmore," he said.

Searching for answers

Four schools that provided data for the study are members of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which is actually known for its more restrictive policies to ensure adequate class time and focus on academics.

In December, the presidents of the NESCAC member institutions met with Bowen, and they have since met with Shulman. At an April NESCAC meeting, the conference's presidents and chair of the board of trustees of each school met with Shulman again and discussed what has become an additional study specifically focusing on the 11 NESCAC institutions.

"They are in the process of looking at this data independently," he said. "In the meantime, what the book has really done is raise consciousness on some issues and the impact student-athletes can have on the entire student body."

One of Bowen and Shulman's conclusions that Wesleyan plans to study on its own campus is whether student-athletes are less serious students there.

"It's a tricky thing to be able to analyze, and it requires lots of data," Shulman said. "In the book, some of the cohorts are very small. For that reason, we need to be cautious drawing too many conclusions from the data. On the other hand, it does raise good questions."

And some of those questions don't have easy answers. Biddiscombe noted, for example, that the increasing intensity of athletics on the Division III level is something institutions are reacting to rather than driving.

"Much of what has taken place, in terms of an emphasis on recruiting and people wanting to practice out of season, is a result of student-athletes coming with high expectations," he said. "Student-athletes are specializing early on, and their parents have high expectations for them. The parents have been paying for club teams and traveling teams all those years, and they want to see a return on their investment. In some cases, parents are serving as de facto agents. It's created demands on colleges to have programs and facilities that weren't there before."

And, those student-athletes don't decide to be Division III student-athletes and buy into the Division III philosophy while in high school. They often are on the same club teams as athletes who end up at Division I, and they bring those expectations with them.

"High-school coaches had traditionally served as a resource to simply provide more information about a student," Biddiscombe said. "Now what you'll find is that club coaches will be aggressively marketing their athletes to institutions."

Biddiscombe also noted that Division III schools have become the target for some parents, even if their kids are not yet in high school.

"If you go see a tournament of highly selective teams, you'll find that one set of parents has scholarship objectives," he said. "The other set of parents is interested in positioning their son or daughter for Ivy or elite liberal arts schools. The kids are playing for fun, but the parents are playing for opportunities.

"It's a whole new dynamic. We're all kind of caught up in this competitive marketplace that's outside the academic arena. And in Division III, the stakes are admissions, not scholarships. That becomes the bidding war. It's no less intense and it's no less real."

"I think the thing that's disturbed me the most is the realization that some of the problems that have been identified with Division I have become apparent in Divisions II and III as well," he said. "But it is a matter of degree. It isn't that student-athletes are unable to negotiate the curriculum, but that they are performing overall slightly below other students. I do worry about that disparity, and that has raised some concerns among Division III folks. But, the reality also is that these institutions are highly selective and highly academically competitive. Indeed, there are some concerns, but I don't think we should overreact. These students, under any circumstances, would be (academically) competitive."

DiBiaggio also noted that some of the authors' conclusions are based on observations rather than hard data. One example of this, he said, was their conclusion about the value of athletics competition.

"Personally, I've always been a believer that intercollegiate athletics has an important role to play on campus in training students for life," he said. "I've always thought that it helped develop leadership skills and taught people about working as a team and coping with adversity. I was surprised that (Shulman and Bowen) came to a different conclusion. I do think this book should cause us to examine the issues and see if there are reasons to be concerned."

DiBiaggio noted that he had served as president at Division I schools and twice on the Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, which has examined intercollegiate athletics. "I thought we would avoid many problems in Division III, but this book would suggest that there may be some cracks in the picture window," he said.

Amy Campbell, athletics director at Bryn Mawr, agreed that the book serves a useful purpose.

"While institutions may differ on the added value of a nationally successful athletics program and thereby dispute the book's findings, it is clear that (the book) raises important questions and in many ways challenges all of us in athletics to be quite clear about our missions within our institutions," she said.

"Instead of responding defensively to the book's findings, we should use it to begin a candid dialogue that allows us to engage colleagues in and out of athletics. Our practices should match our rhetoric."

Campbell noted that discussions about resource allocation, the changing nature of academia and the role of athletics are both important and difficult.

"But without candid conversations, we miss the opportunity to look thoughtfully at our mission, our practices and the desired outcomes," Campbell said.

"Athletics is a valuable and meaningful experience for our students. Participation enriches their lives and complements the rigor of the classroom. 'The Game of Life' offers us the opportunity to engage in the conversation of what, how and why athletics is meaningful within the context of higher education."

Book prompts self-examination at Bates

At Bates College, "The Game of Life" has provided the impetus for an internal study of the institution's student body.

"At Bates, we were curious about whether our push to become more athletically successful in our conference was pushing us," said Suzanne R. Coffey, Bates' athletics director. "So we went to some lengths to look at ourselves, and we were pleased to find that our student-athletes look like our general student population."

Coffey acknowledges that Bates has a high percentage of students participating in some type of athletics and that percentage influences the student body as a whole. Bates has about 1,600 students, with 30 varsity teams and 12 club teams, so 62 percent of the student body participates in one or the other.

"We've never had fraternities or sororities at Bates. Students here have gravitated toward athletics," she said. "We found some variation (between the student-athletes and the student body), but not to the degree that the Mellon study found it."

Among the specific findings at Bates were that:

Student-athlete graduation rates were higher than the class average. And, they were higher for multicultural student-athletes than they were for multicultural students who were not athletes.

Recruited athletes at Bates did have a higher admission rate and a higher yield rate, and recruited athletes were more likely to be applying for early decision admission.

Student-athletes were going to medical school and law school at the same rates as nonathletes.

Student-athletes participated in faculty research at a higher rate than nonathletes, presented or published papers at a higher rate, did independent study at a higher rate, and participated in honor societies at a higher rate.

Student-athletes participated in volunteer service at the same rate as nonathletes, and they also participated in the campus newspaper and campus magazine at essentially the same rate as nonathletes.

"We're talking a lot about (the book's conclusions) on campus, with our trustees and with our students," Coffey said. "We'll be pushing our data (at Bates) too, but at first pass our findings are much more positive than those in the Mellon study."

Size of sample limits conclusions

McArdle made that point about the book's Division I data in a guest editorial for The NCAA News last month, and he reiterated the point in discussing the book's Division III information.

"The problems inherent in generalizing from this kind of selective sampling are well-known to all researchers, and some problems are pointed out by the authors of the book," McArdle said.

"The 14 Division III colleges and universities (studied) are all upper-echelon academic institutions. As the authors clearly state, this selection was intentional and the information was not intended to reflect the broad range of institutions that make up Division III. This means the comparative findings between these selective Division I and selective Division III schools is of general interest. However, the specific information within Division III schools will be of most interest to the minority of colleges and universities that share academic characteristics similar to the Division III schools studied."