“I hate to say it’s inevitable, but I think it is,” he says.

The Game of Life

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 is clearly one of Harvard athletics’ biggest fans. Adorning the walls of his spacious University Hall office are pictures of Harvard Stadium, the 1989 NCAA champion men’s varsity ice hockey team and the 1998 women’s basketball team, which defeated Stanford in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

But sitting on a small shelf next to his desk rests a less conspicuous but perhaps more portentous omen for big-time Harvard athletics—The Game of Life.

Co-authored by Bowen and the Mellon Foundation’s James L. Shulman, the book’s criticism of professional-style recruiting and commercialization in college sports has generated much controversy and even more readership in administrative offices like Lewis’ across the country.

Bowen and Shulman rank among the preeminent experts on college admissions. With former Harvard president Derek C. Bok, Bowen co-authored an influential study on affirmative action at top colleges, The Shape of the River, a project Shulman contributed to as well.

Even Ivy League Executive Director Jeffrey Orleans, who holds that The Game of Life has not played a significant role in the debate over Ivy athletic recruiting, says most Ivy League policy makers have read the book or are at least familiar with it.

In the book, Bowen and Shulman question whether the pursuit of high-profile athletic programs has diverted many colleges from their academic missions.

Using a database compiled over the last 50 years from selective colleges, the authors conclude that athletes often underachieve academically and segregate themselves from the school community—thus contributing little to the community beyond their athletic talent.

Shulman and Bowen also seek to dispel the “myth” that alumni giving depends on athletic success. According to The Game of Life, survey data show that alumni would rather their contributions go to initiatives such as undergraduate education or residential life than athletics.

Though the book includes data from Yale, Princeton and Columbia, some at Harvard aren’t convinced that Bowen and Shulman’s findings apply to the Ivy League—or to Harvard.

“The Bowen-Shulman book has stimulated a national discussion in which the Ivy League is certainly involved,” Lewis says. “[But] it’s a little confusing to take some of the major conclusions from the subject of the book to apply them to the Ivy League. We are in many cases different despite their attempts to fold us into their conclusions.”

Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73 says that while Bowen and Shulman do sample some Ivies, their results don’t apply to Harvard, where she says athletes—due to the randomized housing system and other factors—do not self-segregate as much they do at other schools.

“Our athletes are not different, as a group, from others,” she wrote in an e-mail.

McGrath Lewis says Harvard did not choose to participate in the study because Harvard data would stand out too much, as Harvard students are “much higher in objective criteria than those in other colleges.”