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[quote=Anonymous]Three issues have come up in this thread: (1) Benefits (or not) of college sports; (2) recruiting advantages; (3) impact on student culture overall

1.  Benefits of college sports

The studies about the benefits of sports in college typically have to do with success of student-athlete alums in their life generally and their reported satisfaction with their college experience.  This is a recent one from Gallup (produced for the NCAA, but it's consistent with other research sources)

https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/research/other/2020/2020RES_GallupNCAA_DIII.pdf

That life success/happiness would be a legitimate goal for a college even if it did not lead to donations, although the Gallup reported suggested it did and the difference in giving was greatest among DIII athletes.

2.  Recruiting advantages

SLACs definitely recruit, even at MIT and Cal Tech, but that doesn't necessarily mean they give the recruits an advantage in admissions.  For most recruited (non walk-on) DIII SLAC student-athletes, that isn't what happens.  Even if you are told the coach will support your application, they don't tell your kid whether that actually was necessary. It's part of the sales job.  For most students, they were "recruited" in the sense that the interest from the coach was what persuaded the student to go that school rather than another school.  It's what got them to apply ED, which means they couldn't compare merit-based scholarship opportunities at multiple schools and pick the best package (or even financial aid as long as the school met your demonstrated need, even though some could be more generous in how they define your need).  At most SLACs (and many non-SLACs), the benefit to ED is increasing your chance of getting admitted, either with slightly reduced stats or just not having to be compared to all possible candidates with pretty similar stats within a range.  So, you might find students of all kinds, not just athletes, who get into a school with a bit lower than the median because they applied ED.  There are schools that go the other way and it's harder to get in ED, but those tend to be Ivy and not SLACs.

As a result, in addition to sports producing positive life outcomes for the students post-college, sports are a hook for the school to get kids to chose their school.  That's true even at very selective schools since the best students have choices.  Kids turn down top SLACs for a bit lower ranked SLACs all the time because the coach wants them and they think they will have a better experience with the team, an earlier path to playing time etc. It's a very powerful recruiting tool.

3.  Impact on student culture overall

This varies from school to school, but there's little argument that student clubs, fraternities and sororities, and sports teams lead people to spend more of their time with smaller groups.  It's definitely lonelier if your roommate is gone a lot with their sports team for early practices and late games.  Sports take a lot of time,  but mostly in season.  Theater or acapella groups might be similar, grouped around performances.  Clubs might occupy less of your time weekly, but go on all year.  In all cases, the intense time spent together may cause the people to hang out together all the time.  None of that inherently means the culture of the school is "hurt," other than in the sense that the advice to all students is to get involved and join things as a way to meet people.  It's more apparent in a smaller student body, though, and "sports" are singled out, as if all sports teams are the same (they aren't - some dine, live, and party together, others don't).  A more apt statement would be that people who don't join anything feel pretty lonely and excluded at a small school if most of the students are joining groups.

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