Reply to What would a meritocracy in higher ed look like?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Also regarding sports recruiting and academic standards, I'm specifically referring to elite schools where the recruiting sports lose the school money and don't really contribute to its prestige. If you think sports teams are a necessary part of these institutions, fine, but so are the orchestras, moot courts, model un, and many other groups within these universities, none of whose potential participants get an extra special route to admissions.[/quote]

Gimme a break. At least the recruited athletes are usually evaluated multiple times by college coaches to ensure they are at the caliber needed for their sport.  
 So their athletic skill is real, as opposed to many of the non-athletes who have their not-for-profits set up and run by mommy and daddy in the name of the kid, or the coveted summer internship or job that was negotiated by daddy at the country club with his golfing partner. Or the kids whose parents send them to attend pricey math and science prep classes since age 4 to get a leg up on the “olympiads”. 
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Real athletic skill is often earned by pricey sports clubs and training since age four. So how can you say their skill is real? Could it be that skill elite development can be expensive? But why do you only accept that for athletics but not academics? The truth is that elite academic performance is far more accessible than elite athletic performance. The former can require just a single used textbook while the latter often requires five figures in club fees, training, equipment, showcase camps, training camps, gym fees, food (lots of meat!), protein powder, supplements, etc.

Why do only certain athletes get the privilege of having there performance checked? 10k runners do, but marathon runners don't. Football players do, but rugby players don't. Wrestlers do, but Judokas don't. It's completely arbitrary - there's no reason to believe the former are somehow athletically better than the latter, so why privilege them with with a special admissions process over the latter?

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