Special? Athletes? What?

The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that "seventy percent of scholarship athletes at UCLA over the previous three years were special admits," students admitted after not qualifying under the ordinary admissions policy. Only three percent of the general student body at UCLA are special admits, usually students with exemplary talents or who come from backgrounds that don't generally result in college attendance. At Cal, the figure for athletes is 52%.

At both schools, the vast majority of these athletic special admits are football players.

This is a disservice to college athletics, but it also disserves the rest of the student bodies at schools which value their athletic achievement more than making sure their students are capable of performing to the level expected at their chosen institutions. If UCLA wants to make 70% of their athletes special admits based on exemplary talents outside the classroom, 70% of the general student body should also be admitted on the basis of non-academic talents. Alternatively, if they only want 3% of the student body to be admitted on a non-academic basis, then only 3% of athletes should be admitted without qualifying through the regular admissions policy.

The drawback to this is obvious: Stanford has recently moved to a system of requiring all applicants, athletes included, to be admitted through the admissions office, and the school has all but stopped employing special admits. Of course, Stanford's football team went 1-11 last year.