A report prepared by the Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid a year ago and set to be discussed by the faculty today recommends that Dartmouth and the rest of the Ivy League change from NCAA Division I-AA to Division III athletics.
The report says that Division I athletics and recruiting negatively affect the admissions pool and that the change could save the college approximately $1.85 million a year.
The committee of faculty and administrators, which does not include any athletic department personnel, tempered its recommendation by saying Dartmouth should not make any move without the rest of the Ivy League. The committee also said that a division switch is just one way to make the changes that the report recommends.
The report was presented to the heads of academic departments at a meeting of the Committee of Chairs last week.
"I don't think anyone took it too seriously," said Biology Department Chair Ed Berger.
According to Berger, a move to Division III would require the consent of all eight Ivy League schools, which he and other department heads though would be unlikely.
Under current NCAA rules, Division I athletic programs have considerably more recruiting options than Division III programs. Division III coaches are not allowed to do any off-campus recruiting, and cannot pay for recruits' travel expenses for campus visits.
"It basically limits you to recruiting over the phone and with letters," Baseball Coach Bob Whalen said.
According to the report, the current recruiting process which allow coaches to designate certain recruits as applicants whose athletic talent should be given serious consideration for admission, has "serious consequences for admissions policy and the entire admissions process."
"We do not see, nor can we surmise, any educational goal served by recruitment of students to play in Division I sports that will not be better served, more economically, by participation in Division III sports," the committee wrote.
According to the report, 90 percent of recruited Dartmouth athletes for the Class of 1996 ranked in the lower half of academic stanines.
A stanine is an academic rating determined by combining students' SAT scores, achievement tests, class rank, level of course work and other quantifiable data. Stanine A2, for example, corresponds to students with a mean SAT score of 1050, while stanine A9 corresponds to students with a mean SAT score of 1450.
According to the report, the average member of the Class of 1996 had a combined SAT score of about 1330 while the average athletic recruit in the same class scored about 1150.
The report raised the question of whether this disparity between athletes and non-athletes is consistent with the Ivy League's statement of purpose, which reads, "Student athletes should be generally representative of their class and admitted on the basis of academic promise and personal qualities as well as athletic ability."
"If we're going to get down to how you measure people, how can you do that statistically?" Athletic Director Dick Jaeger said. "There's so much more to a person than statistics indicate."
The report also said, "Academic performance as measured by first-year GPA markedly and significantly distinguishes (1) athletes playing in spectator sports -- football, basketball and hockey (whose mean cumulative GPA = 2.75), (2) other athletes (GPA = 3.03) and (3) non-athletes (GPA = 3.11)."
The report also states that while these statistics may be valid, "Many designated athletes have academic credentials from secondary school that make them desirable prospective students independent of any athletic considerations."
According to the report, the College could save $1 million in financial aid by moving to Division III.
The estimated $1 million is based on replacing 100 male recruits from spectator sports with 100 non-international, non-minority students typical of the wait-list for the Class of 1996. The average recruit received $2,525 more in financial aid than the average wait-list student. When multiplied by 400 (100 students times four years of college), that number comes to over $1 million.
The report said, "Probably that amount of money would be freed up to be spent more productively on financial aid for other kinds of equally 'needy' students."
Another $850,000 or so would come from two areas: an elimination of the recruiting budget and the cutting of several assistant coaches, the report said.
Recruiting costs totalled $595,000 in 1992. $135,000 of that comes from the College, and the remainder is donated by friends clubs and sponsors.
The report stated, "We believe most of [the donations] could continue to be raised on the context of Division III sports," but many in the athletic department disagree.
"My own personal feeling is that we could not generate those kind of revenues as a Division III school," men's basketball coach Dave Faucher said. "Everyone can use figures in their own way to make them say anything."
The report also stated that by eliminating five coaches employed primarily for recruiting, $250,000 could be further cut out of the athletic budget.
"We have not yet had a chance to study the findings in-depth yet," Special Assistant to the Athletic Director Bob Ceplikas said after the Committee of Chairs meeting, "but I don't think the amount of money we would save is anything close to what [the committee] indicates."
