Education: Bulletin 23

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Sporadically, variously, but never so sweepingly as last week, censure has spattered the methods and conduct of U. S. college athletics. Last week's censure was a fat, dun-colored tract labeled "Bulletin 23," published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching after more than three years examining of athletic correspondence, finances, coaching, hygiene in U. S. and Canadian institutions.

81 out of 112. Said Bulletin 23, lengthily but pointedly: Out of the 112 colleges and universities examined, 81 have '"subsidized" athletes. The remaining 28, free from any such taint of professionalism, were the following:

Bates, Bowdoin, Carleton, Chicago, Cornell University, Dalhousie, Emory, Illinois, Laval, McGill, Marquette, Massachusetts Agricultural College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ottawa, Queen's, Reed, Rochester, University of Saskatchewan, Toronto, Trinity, Tufts, Tulane, United States Military Academy, University of Virginia, College of Wooster, Wesleyan, Yale.

One in Seven. One athlete out of every seven engaged in intercollegiate competition is "subsidized."

How is this done? As follows, said Bulletin 23:

1) By providing jobs "for very nominal services." (Example: Notre Dame.)

2) By priests making "arrangements among their own parishioners, members of the faculty, or friends of their college." (Example: Boston College.)

3) By awarding scholarships to students who are potentially valuable athletes. (Examples: Pennsylvania State College, New York University, Colgate, Syracuse, University of Southern California.)

4) By alumni dinners "in honor of victorious teams," to which impressionable preparatory school neophytes are eclectically invited. (Examples: Brown, Dartmouth, Rutgers.)

5) By tradesmen, locally patriotic, giving athletic bounties to local colleges, in one case, "out of impatience . . . with the meagre encouragement given to athletes at the local institution."

6) By " 'caring for'* a more or less definite number of athletes, somewhat less formally than by awarding athletic scholarships." (The number discovered at the following institutions varied from 25 to 50: Bucknell, Gettysburg, Muhlenberg, Oglethorpe, Pennsylvania State, Pittsburgh, West Virginia Wesleyan.)

Attitude. The frame of mind in which the Carnegie Foundation's researchers approached their subject was suggested by the following paragraphs:

"The paid coach, the gate receipts, the special training tables, the costly sweaters and extensive journeys in special Pullman cars, the recruiting from the high school, the demoralizing publicity showered on the players, the devotion of an undue proportion of time to training, the devices for putting a desirable athlete, but a weak scholar, across the hurdles of the examinations—these ought to stop and the intercollege and intramural sports be Drought back to a stage in which they can be enjoyed by large numbers of students and where they do not involve an expenditure of time and money wholly at variance with any ideal of honest study. . . ."**