Sports are often regarded as an embodiment of the American dream—a path through which every American, regardless of wealth or status, can seek higher education and a better life. Not every sport quite fits this narrative, though. Prestigious universities reserve hundreds of spots every year for athletes who play ‘aristocratic’ sports like squash, lacrosse, and rowing. To excel in these aristocratic sports requires thousands of dollars dedicated to private coaching, and the vast majority of public schools do not have the facilities for such sports.
Surely, this is an injustice. “Having your father hire a fantastic coach to teach you to play a country club sport at an extraordinary level should not be a path to [college admission],” writes economist and former President of Harvard Lawrence Summers. “Let’s end athletic recruiting for aristocratic sports.” Although this is a harsh statement, the data seems to justify Summers’ indignation. According to a frequently cited 2023 Wall Street Journal article, in the Ivy League, around 90% of squash players and around 67% of rowing and lacrosse athletes attended private high schools.
Is recruiting for aristocratic sports truly just another boost for the rich? The answer is not as clear-cut as Summers would make it seem. It is true that 67% of Ivy League rowing and lacrosse rosters attended private schools, but so did more than 75% of the current Harvard men’s basketball team.
The 90% number for squash seems like an outlier, but the Wall Street Journal did not include international recruits in the calculations for this percentage. If you consider international recruits, only 58% of Harvard’s current squash roster received private education.
Critics like Summers argue that there is a correlation between the accessibility of a sport and how “meritocratic” that sport is. These statistics illustrate that Summers is not entirely correct: basketball is one of the most accessible, popular sports in the world, yet—at Harvard—it favors private school athletes more than rowing, lacrosse, or squash.
The barrier to entering into a sport does not necessarily reflect how much its recruiting practices favor the wealthy. A more accurate metric is the amount of time and resources it takes to reach recruiting standards; this threshold is incredibly high for nearly every college sport. “People don’t think of soccer as an aristocratic sport, for example, but to be recruited [for soccer] in the US, you need to play on a club team, you need to travel to games. I think that the thing that makes soccer not an aristocratic sport is that there are kids from poor communities who also play, but the people who excel are largely in similar demographics to squash recruits,” Nico Brown (Class I) said.
This is not to say that every sport favors the rich equally: only 33% of the Harvard track and field team and 51% of the Harvard football team attended private schools. Sports that rely more heavily on strength and conditioning oftentimes require less equipment, expensive coaching, or year-round tournament play.
Should colleges only recruit for these sports that rely more heavily on athleticism? Perhaps this solution would be a step in the right direction, yet it would still fail to create a truly meritocratic recruiting process. Given that only 10% of Americans attend private schools, a private school student is still 4 times more likely to compete on the Harvard track team than a public school student (Schaeffer).
It is the unfortunate truth that recruiting for every college sport favors the wealthy. Even in less coaching-heavy sports like track and field, more affluent students simply have more time to train and better access to facilities. If advocates like Summers want to promote equity in the college admissions process, they must rethink sports recruiting at large.
Why do colleges recruit for sports in the first place? “Colleges look for kids who can balance sports and school well, kids who have leadership, kids who have good chemistry with their teammates and good sportsmanship,” Brian Li (Class III) said. Finding success on a sports team often indicates certain qualities, such as leadership and sportsmanship, that academic institutions value. “I think that with every sport, you need to put in the work. Nothing is going to get handed to you,” Ava Newman (Class II) said. Athletic success is also reflective of a student’s hard work and ability to balance multiple responsibilities.
These are all valid reasons to favor athletes in the admissions process. However, with current recruiting practices, less affluent athletes—who might not reach recruiting standards due to a lack of resources yet who still exhibit discipline and leadership qualities—are not given as much preferential treatment. In a genuinely meritocratic recruiting process, a college might instead look at athletic success within the context of what resources are available to a student.
Unfortunately, equity has never been the sole goal of college admissions. “If [colleges] have good sports teams, people view them in a good way. When someone wins a sports championship, in many ways it’s easier to advertise that than to celebrate someone’s academic success,” Boys Varsity Squash Coach Mike Tootill said. Having good sports teams is beneficial to a college in the realm of public relations, school spirit, and revenue. An “equitable” recruitment system would undermine these priorities.
It is ultimately up to colleges to decide what they value in their sports programs. However, they should not fall for the illusion that sports are somehow a great equalizer.