<p>I’m going to turn this argument on its ear…</p>
<p>The OP has asked whether the lowering of admissions standards to allow for more competitive athletic teams is better or worse for a college.</p>
<p>In order to understand what is better or worse for a college, one must understand why societies have colleges in the first place and what is a college’s mission.</p>
<p>I think we would all agree that colleges were created to develop and spread the skills necessary for the success of a society. When you look at the highest eductional instutitions going back in time, they were places that collected agricultural, mechanical, medical, and military knowledge and used it to train those who would be leaders and influential in a society in the skills deemed critical to the advancement of that culture.</p>
<p>These schools were full of the most talented in the fields, the great majority being specialists in one area or another. Nobody would confuse a military man with a physician in either thought process or physical prowess, nor would they compare them judging one more deserving of educational opportunity than another.</p>
<p>As time and passed, cultures evolved, and more resources have become available to higher education, the explosion of disciplines and the proportion of resources devoted to the various disciplines has changed as what is considered critical to the success of societies has evolved. We no longer spend most of our resources feeding, sheltering, and defending oursevles from other civilizations, so we can devote more resources to aesthetic (cultural) studies from arts and music to gender and ethnic studies. Our basic instincts to develop physical skills to protect ourselves which started military science schools have evolved into sports programs and athletic training, where those physical and leadership skills are honed in socially more peaceful competitive endeavors that the society identifies with.</p>
<p>Higher education has never been about a single skill (intellectual, artistic, athletic) set being developed at the expense of others. And it remains that way today. We have a balance of skills being developed at colleges and even cross pollenated to a certain extent as a society of skill silos (technicians here, writers someplace else, and athletes over there) would not yield a cohesive society. So it makes perfect sense to integrate these populations as you develop their skills, avoiding that separation that only reinforces itself throughout life.</p>
<p>So how do you select a balanced set of skills to develop that cohesive society? </p>
<p>First you don’t use the measurement of one skill (SAT, GPA) to measure another skill (artistic or athletic skill). Nor would you use a 40 yard dash to admit people to your engineering school.</p>
<p>So the idea that we are lowering our standards to admit athletes, presumes that an academic population is what we are trying to develop. That is only part of the skill set we (as a society) have deemed important to develop. We also seem to desire a highly physically competitive set of individuals as well as an artistic set to complement these academics.</p>
<p>And while some don’t see the value of the others (the “unfair” athletic advantage is typical of this thought pattern), the purpose of a university is partially to get these divergent groups together to socially unify these populations, building a stronger society, the ultimate goal of higher education.</p>
<p>Getting off my soap box…</p>