 The Game of Life is co-written by William Bowen, former president of Prince-ton University, and James Shulman, his colleague at the Mellon Foundation, where both men are officers.
By analyzing data on 90,000 students and drawing on historical research and new information, the authors demonstrate how athletics influence class composition and the campus ethos of selective schools.
Shulman and Bowen also show that, in some important ways, athletic programs raise even more difficult questions of educational policy for small private colleges and highly selective universities than they do for big-time, scholarship-granting schools. They discover that today’s athletes enter college less academically prepared and with different goals and values than their classmates. They reveal that gender equity efforts have wrought large, sometimes unanticipated changes. And they show that the alumni/ae appetite for winning teams is not insatiable. By examining how athletes and other graduates view the game of life—and how colleges play a role in shaping a society’s view of what its rules should be—Shulman and Bowen go far beyond sports. They tell readers about higher education today: the ways in which colleges set policies, reinforce or neglect their core mission and send signals about what matters.
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