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Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

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Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#61

Surprised the article does not discuss the much more impactful fact that Ivy’s coordinate to not provide merit scholarships . Columbia does a bit of defection on the side that is tolerated, but otherwise there are no merit scholarships for Ivy league students.

This one has always been truly baffling to me. By all means, make sure that need-based scholarships are plentiful, but isn't great academics the entire point of the Ivy league?

I was never going to make it into an Ivy anyway, but I remember learning about that system as a middle-class high school kid and thinking "huh, sucks for me I guess." Too rich for need-based scholarships, too poor to pay full price.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#62

For some reason I can't reply to a comment that said > Author is biased, probably couldn't get to one of those schools... Ad hominem attack, but I was amused even though the facts don't precisely support the accusation. It is technically true that Prof. Carter didn't attend an Ivy League school as an undergraduate - he went to Stanford, which (currently) plays in the Pac-12 and NCAA division I. Of course that doesn't…

Because it was marked dead. replying to flame bait comments is precisely what HN tries to avoid when it does that, but you found your workaround :)

Hmm, I don't think I would have been quite as quick to hit the flag button. The (now missing?) PP comment to me read "probably couldn't get into an Ivy" with the crux being that Stanford is of course not part of the Ivy League. (But Yale Law School is certainly part of Yale, though iirc it's rare for graduate or professional students to play in the NCAA due to eligibility.)

Sometimes people forget that the Ivy League isn't a classification of elite schools but actually an athletic conference; this is of course directly relevant to the issue of athletic scholarships which is under discussion.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#63

Surprised the article does not discuss the much more impactful fact that Ivy’s coordinate to not provide merit scholarships . Columbia does a bit of defection on the side that is tolerated, but otherwise there are no merit scholarships for Ivy league students.

The Ivies and adjacent elite colleges are more than capable of giving out academic scholarships—they simply refuse to because that would lead to a race to the bottom in terms of how much money they'd be able to extract from top talent (who could easily negotiate colleges against each other for lower and lower tuition). And, from experience, Colubmia's defection hardly counts for much (which is why, I suspect, it's permitted): even their "prestigious" Rabi Scholarship yields no reduction in a mind-boggling $90,000 tuition—just a minute research stipend. They want to make you feel special while ensuring you still pay full price.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#64

Cui bono? There are a lot of problems with the Ivy League, the lack of athletic scholarships are one of the few things they do absolutely right. The thing is that athletics are less, not more democratic as a distribution mechanism for admission slots. The author seems to be under the mistaken belief that most of these slots would be available for your football and basketball players, where stories of rising from pove…

> It has historical roots in excluding Jewish students

I'm glad the Ivy (Penn) that I graduated from over thirty years ago was enlightened enough to admit good students regardless of whether they were Jewish. Or Asian.

> athletics has been a backdoor for admissions ... used to exclude ... those outside the upper class.

The student athlete I knew, my roommate Tony Tomaska, was the son of a Chicago policeman. He played for the football team. He was working class, not upper class.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#65
post #33

Athletic scholarships is one of those very foreign concepts, for us outside the US. Seems like a uniquely (North) American thing?

Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial College in the UK admit students and provide benefits, scholarships and bursaries to people that are considered world class rowing talent, quietly and unofficially. Many European countries have special programs for sports talents to develop and receive economic benefits whilst serving military service and/or seeking higher education. Most people don't know anything about these programs…

To be blunt as someone who attended Oxford and was friend with someone who ended up coxing the Blue boat, nobody gives an actual shit about rowing there. It’s just a funny tradition. Colleges boat clubs are nice because the sport is great, the two bump races are fun and the mixers are rowdy. The Boat race is seen as a funny tradition and an excuse to compete with Cambridge. It is in no way as serious as academic leagues in the USA.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#66

Cui bono? There are a lot of problems with the Ivy League, the lack of athletic scholarships are one of the few things they do absolutely right. The thing is that athletics are less, not more democratic as a distribution mechanism for admission slots. The author seems to be under the mistaken belief that most of these slots would be available for your football and basketball players, where stories of rising from pove…

> It has historical roots in excluding Jewish students I'm glad the Ivy (Penn) that I graduated from over thirty years ago was enlightened enough to admit good students regardless of whether they were Jewish. Or Asian. > athletics has been a backdoor for admissions ... used to exclude ... those outside the upper class. The student athlete I knew, my roommate Tony Tomaska, was the son of a Chicago policeman. He played…

I do recommend the Third Reich in the Ivy League as a generally good read, which highlights the significantly more nazi-sympathetic student body at harvard with the more activist population at Columbia, largely in part due to the fact that Columbia failed to attract the white elites of NYC and had a larger Jewish population as a result.

>The student athlete I knew, my roommate Tony Tomaska, was the son of a Chicago policeman. He played for the football team. He was working class, not upper class.

Yeah I don't deny that a lot of athletes are from disadvantageous backgrounds, I was only to highlight that the sports we associate w/ that fact do not make up a lot of other sports in the ivy league, and that if your goal diversity, you should just increase admissions of disadvantaged students, not use athletics as a proxy.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#67

Cui bono? There are a lot of problems with the Ivy League, the lack of athletic scholarships are one of the few things they do absolutely right. The thing is that athletics are less, not more democratic as a distribution mechanism for admission slots. The author seems to be under the mistaken belief that most of these slots would be available for your football and basketball players, where stories of rising from pove…

They don't have athletic scholarships because admission is need-blind for all students and you will only pay what your family is able to. But they still have "slots" for athletic admissions, where each coach gets to pick who they admit, and as long as they clear the minimum bar (which is different for each sport) of GPA and test scores, they will be admitted early. It's not technically "athletic scholarships" but it may as well be.

What it does mean is that an excellent athlete from a rich family will choose Stanford over Harvard, because Stanford will pay them a scholarship even though they don't "need it." This is one reason why Stanford athletics are superior to those of Ivy League schools.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#68

Cui bono? There are a lot of problems with the Ivy League, the lack of athletic scholarships are one of the few things they do absolutely right. The thing is that athletics are less, not more democratic as a distribution mechanism for admission slots. The author seems to be under the mistaken belief that most of these slots would be available for your football and basketball players, where stories of rising from pove…

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Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#69

https://archive.ph/I6mJI

@dang, why are some comments that include archive links replyable, and some not?

I'm pretty sure mods can pin a post, something they often do to archive links, and that makes it so you can't reply.

Re: Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel

#70

The author seems to have an axe to grind. > The need for diversity in education is as vital today as ever. But it’s not clear whether the Ivy Agreement’s ban on athletic scholarships actually promotes that end. One might even wonder whether, by not competing over sports stars, the schools are reducing the diversity of their student bodies. Yet later admits: > But recent research tells us that fielding a great team pr…

You are missing the point. It is not a problem of an individual school refusing to give academic scholarships. Instead the problem is the schools all agreeing together to do this. By all means, let each university individually choose if they want to allow scholarships or not, with zero agreement between the schools.

Thank you, you've grasped the point that the others missed: it's collusion and price-fixing that's illegal. Not whether failing to offer athletic scholarships was a good idea.

The courts didn't care what they were colluding about, just that they were colluding. If they independently come to the same decision, that's one thing, just like an oil company following the price decisions of another one is fine, but the two of them agreeing to raise prices is not.

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