The Ivy League will for the first time cap the number of athletes its eight members may recruit and enroll and subject those athletes to tougher academic standards, the presidents of the schools decided June 17.

At its biannual meeting, the Council of Ivy Group Presidents limited the number of recruited athletes who may matriculate to 1.4 times the number needed to fill the travel squads for the 33 “Ivy Championship” sports.

The minimum Academic Index (AI), a measure of eligibility that incorporates SAT scores and GPA or class rank on a 240-point scale, was also raised from 169 to 171, and a requirement was added that the mean AI of recruited athletes be no more than one standard deviation below the mean of all undergraduates at the particular college.

“As a group we expect to maintain and likely increase the academic strength of the athletes,” said Jeff Orleans, executive director of the Ivy League.

The move is part of a drive supported by a number of presidents—including University President Lawrence H. Summers—to tighten academic standards.

At the meeting, the presidents also mandated that admission of recruits for men’s basketball and men’s ice hockey will now be regulated along with the rest of the Ivy Championship sports for a two-year trial period. In the recent past they had been regulated independently.

They amended as well one aspect of the unpopular “seven week rule” the presidents adopted at last June’s meeting, that forces athletes to spend seven weeks of off-season time without “required or coach-supervised activities.”

In a step to ease the impact of last years ruling, the presidents eliminated the requirement that the seven weeks be in blocks of at least seven consecutive days.

The 49 days may now be distributed throughout the year, adopting a proposal Harvard originally made to the council.

Academic Changes

Orleans said the adoption of the 1.4 “multiplier” allows for “attrition” of players who, due to injury or some other reason, do not play. But it also limits the previously unregulated total number of recruits.

Previously, there were caps only on how many recruited athletes a school could accept in football, men’s basketball and men’s ice hockey.

Orleans said the incorporation of basketball and hockey into the general pool of sports is meant to strike a balance between academic standards and competitiveness.

“[There is] a feeling that overall...the most effective way to regulate both academic credentials and the number of recruited athletes and to give every institution the best chance [to win] is to put all the sports except football in one pool,” Orleans said.

Orleans said the establishment of a mean AI within range of the overall undergraduate AI, may involve balancing recruited athletes of all sports that have different academic credentials.