Meritocracy 1, Harvard 0

As reported in the Yale Daily News last Thursday, a committee of Ivy League athletic directors will submit a report to member schools’ presidents recommending a reduction in the number of athletics recruits. Such a reduction, if implemented, would superficially alter a policy that needs much more radical change. What Harvard—and the Ivy League—needs is either an increase in athletic quality of athletic recruits or no athletic recruits at all.

Until the Ivy League changes its policy, there will continue to be only one college in the United States where nearly every admitted student has demonstrated national level excellence in some respect or another—Stanford.

Stanford is far more meritocratic than any of its Ivy League rivals, and so it admits a far more talented incoming class every year. Harvard students may surpass Stanford students in academic and extracurricular achievement. However, Stanford, by being sensibly meritocratic in all areas of admission, absolutely dominates Harvard by attempting to recruit the very best athletes in nearly every sport.

Granted, Harvard does compete on a national level in several sports, such as squash and crew, but most of these are only played in certain circumscribed (both geographically and economically) areas of the country. In all the truly national and high profile sports, Stanford has a huge edge.

The reason, of course, is in part that Stanford offers athletic scholarships while Harvard’s are need-based, and in part that Harvard (and the rest of the Ivies) employs an inane policy of athletic recruiting.

Athletics is the one pursuit where general mediocrity will gain you admission here. Harvard accepts nothing less than the best from students who try to gain admission based primarily on their achievement in math, for example. And math concentrators here are likely better than any other comparable group in the country. Football players here, however, are likely bested by at least 100 comparable groups in their primary raison d’entrance. Sports are the only endeavor on all of campus where our students pale in comparison to the best of the nation.

One common defense of Harvard’s recruiting policy is that our athletes (unlike athletes at other schools, like Stanford) are well-rounded individuals who will contribute to the classroom as well as just on the playing field. But this argument is severely lacking.

It would be absurd to choose between math majors based on, say, who will be better on his intramural sports team. Picture an admissions committee mulling over two candidates: “Well, this one won the International Math Olympiad, but only averaged 7.6 points per game on varsity basketball in high school. This one didn’t even make it past the national math competition, but scored 10 per game on varsity basketball, and what a shotblocker! Let’s admit him!”

Choosing football players based on who scored a 1200 versus a 1000 on the SATs is equally absurd; the one who scored 1200 may get a B in Government 30: “Introduction to American Government” instead of a C-plus, but both will make their primary contribution to Harvard by scoring a touchdown, not by scoring a 98 percent on a test. Athletes—like the rest of Harvard students—should be admitted based on how excellently they do what they are best at, not based on whether they are poor, mediocre or decent at other things.

Am I advocating the Stanfordization of Harvard? Not necessarily. What I am saying, though, is that there is no good reason why every student at what is ostensibly the world’s greatest university should not, in some respect, have achieved national level excellence in order to gain admission.

If we are going to have recruited athletes here, then they should be the best. If, instead, we are unwilling to accept the academic and institutional ramifications of having national level athletes, then we should have no athletic recruits at all. We should, at any rate, do anything but our current middling policy, which engenders both academic and athletic mediocrity.

We all have watched proudly as several Harvard students (most notably in women’s hockey) have been competing in the Winter Olympics. The number of Harvard Olympians, though, should either be far greater or even smaller.

The University needs to decide if it wants to have a basketball team in the Final Four, or a basketball team composed of fully academically qualified walk-ons; but Harvard’s current policy on athletic recruiting just doesn’t add up.