Go Card?

"They can't keep raising the bar,'' said Dave Tipton, a former All-America defensive tackle at Stanford who served as an assistant coach there for 18 years under five head coaches. He said the admissions standards for football players are "markedly'' higher than they were 10 years ago. "Hopefully it will go back to where it was, which was tough but at least doable. Some of these kids are getting admitted to the Ivy League but not at Stanford.''

While I was never a fanatic for sports at Stanford, it certainly was nice to go to a prestigious university that also had excellent athletic programs - and it didn't hurt that during my undergraduate years, Stanford men's basketball was perhaps at an all-time peak and the men's football team was pretty decent, as well. The San Francisco Chronicle has published an interesting article on the perception that the undergraduate admissions policies in recent years have de-emphasized athletics in the mix of factors that gain a prospective student admittance into Stanford, and as such, have hurt the ability of certain Stanford athletic programs to be competitive. While I sympathize with current students, alums, and other backers of the university in their pains over the lack of success of our basketball and football teams in recent years, it is hard to argue against rising academic standards in admitting students, given the mission of the university. I don't have much to say about this issue, but may keep an eye on it, along with some other mucking around I am doing on questions about higher education.