SARA LEVIN, a student at Harvard’s School of Public Health, speaks about her book on college athletics, Reclaiming the Game.

The cost to elite educational institutions of recruiting student-athletes is becoming more than those schools can bear, two speakers told a crowd at the Graduate School of Education’s Gutman Conference Center.

There is a growing divide—both academically and socially—between recruited athletes and the rest of the student body, according to Sarah A. Levin ’00 and William D. Adams, President of Colby College.

Levin co-authored Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values—which was published this summer—with William G. Bowen.

The book is a follow-up to The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, which Bowen wrote with James L. Shulman.

While the first book used data from four Ivy League schools, the latest book considers all eight—including Harvard—within a broader consideration of smaller and more elite academic institutions.

Levin and Adams argued that recruited students face lower admissions standards, underperform once admitted and tend to isolate themselves on campus.

Levin pointed to statistical evidence from the second book to support her claim that athletic recruits—those included on lists coaches present to the admissions office—face lower admission standards.

“Your chances of getting into the Ivies go up as your SATs go up, but at every level there’s a substantial advantage if you’re listed by a coach,” said Levin.

The statistics reveal not only lower admissions standards but underperformance by student-athletes once they are on campus, Levin said.

Recruits for “high-profile sports”—men’s football, basketball, and ice hockey—perform especially poorly, on average placing in the 19th percentile of the class, she said.

Levin sourced the problem to “the recruitment process, not...the time commitment required for a sport,” noting that recruited athletes underperform academically even during the off-season and in instances when they have stopped playing their sport altogether.

While Levin presented statistical evidence to establish her claim, Adams spoke to the nature of the problem and how it might be remedied.

“We have seen in this country the growing professionalization of collegiate sports for at least the last three decades,” he said.

The solution lies in eliminating the “competitive and commercial” pressures that affect athletes and coaches alike, he said.

Adams said that while in the past Ivy League and other elite institutions have been relatively immune to the effects of such pressures, this is no longer the case.