New paper on determinants of college admissions…

[Anonymous]

I wonder if the squeeze on university athletics in the paying athletes/transfer portal/NIL era is relevant to to any of these universities.

(The squeeze meaning, paying the marquee sports team means the death of XC, squash, swim team, whatever.)

Like Duke, maybe?

[Anonymous]

I liked this from the abstract: "the three factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas academic credentials such
as SAT/ACT scores are highly predictive of post-college success."

As in, if we had a meritocracy, the nonacademic admits are literally a wasted education and the seats should be given to good test takers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I liked this from the abstract: "the three factors that give children from high-income families an admissions advantage are uncorrelated or negatively correlated with post-college outcomes, whereas academic credentials such
as SAT/ACT scores are highly predictive of post-college success."

As in, if we had a meritocracy, the nonacademic admits are literally a wasted education and the seats should be given to good test takers.

That was part of the abstract but it wasn’t aligned to their conclusion which was to add more preferences for lower SES students and adjust athletic recruiting to match the academic profile of the class overall which again shifts preferences downward.

The irony of the second part is that if you look at the data, athletic recruits while uncorrelated overall had high correlation in conjunction with high SAT/ACT scores meaning that a being a high scoring athletic recruit was extremely predictive of post graduate economic success.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the squeeze on university athletics in the paying athletes/transfer portal/NIL era is relevant to to any of these universities.

(The squeeze meaning, paying the marquee sports team means the death of XC, squash, swim team, whatever.)

Like Duke, maybe?

It could become an excuse to cut. Stanford tried cutting a bunch of sports awhile ago but Alumni quickly put an end to the idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the squeeze on university athletics in the paying athletes/transfer portal/NIL era is relevant to to any of these universities.

(The squeeze meaning, paying the marquee sports team means the death of XC, squash, swim team, whatever.)

Like Duke, maybe?

It could become an excuse to cut. Stanford tried cutting a bunch of sports awhile ago but Alumni quickly put an end to the idea.

There was a recent article about UVA and NC State eliminating their diving teams and other niche sports:

IN EARLY MARCH, coaches informed Nick and his teammates that Virginia was suspending its diving program for the foreseeable future. Five days later, N.C. State slimmed its swimming and diving roster down to one diver. Noah was cut. Whenever a college program is axed or pared down, there are school-specific factors, few of which are ever directly conveyed to the affected athletes, coaches or fans. But as the Wanzers deal with the fallout of Virginia’s and N.C. State’s decisions, athletes around the country are in a similar type of scramble.

On Tuesday — July 1, 2025 — colleges started paying athletes directly for the first time, the result of a major legal settlement that was formally approved last month. For the coming academic year, each school will be allowed to pay up to $20.5 million to athletes across sports, though most of that will go to football and men’s basketball players. The settlement also instituted roster limits in every sport, permitting schools to offer unlimited scholarship money to a smaller number of total athletes. Every power conference athletic program, including Virginia and N.C. State, will participate in the new economy. Many other schools will, too, meaning almost all of their rosters have been reshaped — and as you read this sentence, staffers are flipping over couch cushions, looking for a spare nickel or million to keep up with higher spenders.

One strategy, of course, is cutting costs. And one way to do that, of course, is cutting sports or athletes or both. A spokesman for Virginia athletics declined to make anyone available to discuss the suspension of the school’s diving program. A spokesman for N.C. State athletics declined to make anyone available to discuss dropping most of its divers. It’s possible that any school has wanted to cut or scale back on a sport for years, for whatever reason, and the settlement offered an out, an easy explanation, with the need to pay athletes and the related roster crunches.