With the way athletes are treated at Harvard, you’d be forgiven for assuming that each pair of DHAs is issued with a complimentary dunce cap.
Already rumored to have “compromised” acceptances, members of the 41 recognized varsity sports inevitably encounter additional pigeonholing one year into their college careers—when they choose concentrations, and become acquainted with the most disdainful of all Harvard labels: “Gov jock.”
But under scrutiny, the assumption underlying that moniker—that athletes major in economics or government because they are ill-equipped to handle anything more challenging—falls flat.
Looking at the concentration distribution for Harvard’s varsity athletes and surveying the motivations behind their concentration choices, it seems that not only do most athletes stray from the courses of study expected of them by their peers, but those who do stick to the “typical jock” majors are rarely motivated by the promise of an easy ride to a college degree.
Yes, it’s true that a lot of athletes choose economics. But the belief that Harvard’s athletes flock towards only a few concentrations is a typical stereotype: partially based in fact, then overblown and misconstrued.
For many non-athletes, the scope of the athletic community is limited to those who participate in highly visible sports—football, men’s and women’s hockey, and men’s and women’s basketball, for instance. Those teams attract the largest fan base and their members have come to typify the “jock” norm at many of the nations’ colleges.
This view, of course, doesn’t account for all 900 students who participate in varsity athletics. And limiting discussion of student-athletes to those high-profile sports presents an incomplete picture that helps propagate the bias that dogs athletes throughout their careers at Harvard.
Intelligence aside, athletes tend to pick concentrations that gel smoothly with their schedules, draw on discipline and competitive edge they hone in practice, and come recommended by older teammates. But, perhaps most importantly, certain subsets of male athletes tend to take a pragmatic approach to college, choosing a major that will get them a high-paying job.
NUMBERS DON’T LIE—OR DO THEY?
As is widely assumed, the football team is stocked with economics and government concentrators. Nearly 50 percent of the team’s 76 sophomores, juniors and seniors do in fact concentrate in economics, and an additional 17 percent of the team are indeed government-concentrating, well, jocks.
“Our only returning First-Team All-Ivy player, Bobby Everett, is an engineering major and three of our top seven offensive linemen are pre-med concentrators,” boasts Harvard football coach Timothy L. Murphy. “Having said that, we do have a lot of econ majors.”
And it’s equally true that members of the most prominent women’s sports opt for psychology, often considered the female “jock” alternative to economics or government. Half the members of the women’s hockey team will graduate with degrees in psychology, as will 30 percent of the women’s basketball team, though it should be noted that these teams have smaller rosters than some of their male cohorts.
Harvard’s varsity athletes as a whole do depart—in some cases radically—from broader campus trends. Data from the Office of the Registrar for the fall of 2004—tracking the concentration choices for the classes of 2005, 2006 and 2007—show that approximately one quarter of Harvard students will graduate with economics or government degrees, compared with over 37 percent of athletes and 65 percent of the football team.
While concentration selection will fluctuate annually, in the average year almost half (46 percent) of the graduating class will be comprised of concentrators in five fields: government, economics, social studies, psychology and biology. This year, just over 60 percent of athletes concentrate in those same five fields. That clustering becomes even more pronounced when focus is again directed at the football team—where five of every six players are in economics, government, biology or psychology. There are no social studies concentrators on the squad. The difference isn’t huge, but it’s there.
This deviation doesn’t reflect a trend across the board, but instead a tug between some teams which tend heavily towards one discipline, and others which are more varied than the student body itself.
Some sports programs actually more closely mirror campus-wide concentration choices. The men’s volleyball team, for example, fields as many computer science majors as their economics counterparts. Likewise, the women’s lightweight crew boasts 11 biology or biochemical sciences concentrators—half its upper-class roster—and a slew of rowers studying in less frequently chosen fields, from Sanskrit and Indian Studies to Environmental Science and Public Policy. The glaring omission from the slate? Psychology.
SHOW ME THE MONEY
For many varsity athletes—the trend is particularly visible among male athletes and football players—winning on the field goes hand in hand with scoring big off the field in the academic and pre-professional world.
Few of the football players concentrating in economics or government claim they’ve chosen their field for its ease. Instead, this choice tends to be founded on more practical considerations: earnings and job placement.
Quarterback Ryan J. Fitzpatrick ’05, one of 16 football players who says he chose his concentration based on his career aspirations and on the advice of his older teammates, says economics was the closest thing he could find to a business major.
“I was very interested in business when I arrived in Cambridge, but there was no major offered that was strictly defined as business,” he writes in his survey response. “Acting on the advice of friends with similar motivations and similar problems, I was told that economics was the closest alternative.”
Fitzpatrick has his own theory of why athletes gravitate toward economics.
“I feel that economics is a very common major among athletes because of its competitiveness,” he writes. “Athletes, in general, are a very driven group that enjoy high-pressure, high-stress environments. The opportunities in many of the careers that follow an economics degree come with such an environment.”
Fitzpatrick’s teammate, Robert B. Balkema ’06, says he switched from engineering sciences to economics to save time and with his eye on his future income. He also describes a tie between football and economics beyond convenience and peer pressure.
“I think that many are interested in the business world,” Balkema writes in an e-mail. “The business world is a very competitive place, much like the football field. I think a lot of the players look to that as a reason for entering this field and economics is a good preparation for this line of work.”
Soccer co-captain Liza K. Barber ’05, an English concentrator, says that many of her friends who are economics concentrators chose the field not only because that was where their interests lie, but because “you kind of have a job to look toward. Economics is one of those concentrations with a foreseeable career path.”
Sixteen of the 35 football players who responded to the Crimson survey said “projected earnings” were primary concerns in their concentration choice. Fourteen of the 16 are economics concentrators. In contrast, only 30 athletes from the rest of the teams combined said anticipated career earnings were their primary motivation.
The pre-professional lure of the economics department is connected, in part, with another argument for the popularity of the field: the claim that socioeconomic background dictates students’ course of study.
University Professor Harry R. Lewis ’68, who served as dean of the college from 1995 to 2003, says he sees a strong connection between financial aid students and social science concentration.
“I strongly suspect that the variations in concentration choices between athletes and non-athletes have a lot to do with family income,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail earlier this week. “Across the Ivy League, athletes are more likely than other students to be on financial aid. Probably students on financial aid are more likely than other students to concentrate in fields such as economics that are believed, correctly or incorrectly, to provide relatively low-risk prospects for financial security.”
Lewis says that the imbalance in the concentration choices of athletes would probably match the data for students from lower income families.
“The interest in athletes’ concentration choices happens because those data are visible and because athletes are so scrutinized generally,” Lewis says. “But I’d bet if you could get a breakdown of the concentration choices of Harvard or Ivy League students by family income or by financial aid status, similar variations would stand out.”
Lewis and Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 both point to two books on education, The Game of Life by William G. Bowen and James L. Shulman and Reclaiming the Game by Bowen and Sarah A. Levin ’00, to illustrate some of the more nuanced perspectives of varsity athletics on Ivy League campuses.
“The increasing preference of athletes for social sciences is surely due in some part to their greater interest in earning high incomes,” Shulman and Bowen write in The Game of Life. “Combined with the perception of many people that economics, in particular, is a partial substitute for a business major in colleges and universities that do not have undergraduate offerings in business....Athletes, and especially those who play the High Profile sports, are much more inclined than students at large to emphasize the importance to them of achieving financial success.”
This seems to relate to the situation at Harvard, where “Our football team is more diverse than the general student population in terms of ethnicity and [socioeconomics],” Murphy says. The players therefore treat college more pragmatically and less abstractly, he says.
Barber says there seems to be a gender component to concentration selection as well, although she hesitates to make comments that would offend women on campus. She says that women are more likely to choose more flexible career paths without feeling the stress of supporting a family. “We have other options,” she says. “I think that has a lot to do with this attitude of, ‘Why would I do something like English or psychology or something that I couldn’t support my family [with],” Barber says, referring to her male friends who eschew those concentrations.
The male-female difference is laid out in Bowen and Shulman’s book.
The Game of Life reads, “Whereas a disproportionate share of male athletes (as compared with other male students) entered college rating the goal ‘to be very well off financially’ as ‘essential’ or ‘very important,’ there is no such difference between women who were and were not athletes.”
Of course, there are those who say they chose economics for its relative “ease”—it is, after all, one of the few concentrations that only requires 10 courses in the field to graduate.
When asked why she chose economics, women’s hockey player M. Nicole Corriero ’05 replied glibly: “Flexibility of schedule and topic, opportunity to get good grades.” Corriero, who says that her practice and game schedule “really limited” her choices, also claims that she is “to blame for most of the stereotypes.”
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
For Dylan P. Reese ’07, an NHL draft pick and economics concentrator, a combination of academic curiosity and an interest in pre-professional business studies steered him toward the economics department.
“I know I want to go into business and I felt that economics would provide me with the best background for that,” Reese says. “I never thought about future earnings when I chose econ. I think that any major has potential to make you big money in the future.”
Of the 314 athletes who responded to The Crimson’s survey, 192 listed “pure academic interest” as the primary consideration in their choice of concentration, and 43 more listed academic interest as one of two or three motivating factors. Scheduling, though, is another important factor for student-athletes.
Reese, who says that he might have tried to fill pre-med requirements if he were not an athlete, notes that economics is highly amenable to the athlete’s schedule. “Because econ is such a big concentration there is a lot of flexibility with sections and office hours, making it easy to attend class,” he says.
Many athletes say the late section times in the humanities and the high volume of laboratory work in science courses often interferes with their athletic commitments. When it comes to course selection, athletes are constrained by practice and game schedules, and allegiance to a team often entails making sacrifices in academic ambition, or long, drawn-out negotiations with teaching fellows and tutorial leaders.
Some athletes are willing and able to go to bat with their section leaders both for their academics and for their sports, while others simply have to avoid classes that conflict with practice times.
In the survey, 17 say they were unable to take eight or more of the classes they wanted because of practice times, and 46 more said they had passed up five to seven courses. Still others, such as hockey player Charles E. Johnson ’06, say that they shop classes with their practice schedules in tow, and do not even consider courses outside their allotted time.
“I can’t say numbers [of classes I haven’t been able to take] but I cannot take any lab-based courses and I couldn’t take any freshman seminars and I can’t take any classes that start after 1 p.m.,” Johnson says. “So how ever many that is.”
Another varsity hockey player, Thomas M. Walsh ’06, says he chose to concentrate in government on the advice of his fellow teammates, and “probably would not have” chosen a different concentration if he were not an athlete. He, too, says he has encountered problems scheduling classes.
“It seems that most sections are either in the afternoon during practice, or on Thursdays and Fridays when we are traveling,” Walsh says. “This semester I have three Thursday sections which I am going to miss almost every other week, which really hurts participation. So scheduling classes is pretty easy, but trying to schedule sections is really annoying.”
Murphy says that though his team’s practices are set out in advance—they meet Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., with games on Saturdays—he emphasizes the importance of academics in their lives as student-athletes. “Players choose their classes according to their area of interest and concentration, not practice time,” he says.
Athletes interested in pre-medical studies or hard science concentrations may encounter difficulties in finding an ideal lab time, many say, that are only matched by the hardships in finding a lab partner who is willing to be flexible about his or her schedule.
Rachel L. Orler ’07, a walk-on to the women’s lightweight crew, says that while she has escaped much of the stereotyping felt by college athletes, she has encountered obstacles in the pursuit of her concentration, biochemical sciences.
“It has made scheduling labs when I have more than one science class per semester very difficult,” Orler says. “Additionally, I have been unable to find a flexible enough research position as of yet.”
While only a dozen of the athletes surveyed say they would have chosen a different concentration if they were not involved with a sport, more say they might have selected more interesting courses, or would have taken time to write a thesis.
Barber, the soccer player and English concentrator, says she has had occasional difficulty scheduling courses. “In one case, there was just me and another girl in tutorial,” Barber says. “She was great at rescheduling when I had games, but I’ve had other circumstances where that’s not the case.”
She says she has sometimes had to miss over four sections when there was no way around the game schedule.
“My grades have been lowered, or I’ve had to go to makeup sections,” she says. Barber also says that classes that attract other athletes tend to make her more comfortable. “In many English classes where I’ve been the only athlete…I’m wearing my DHAs to class, and I get that look from the teacher like I’m there for the wrong reasons,” Barber says.
Barber says she concentrates in English because of her personal interests, although she came to college wanting to focus on business. She also says that because of practice times, she can’t keep up with the reading and has to cram before papers and exams.
Lindsey K. Morse ’05, a member of the women’s lightweight crew, transferred to Harvard from Cornell, where the problem of scheduling classes around practices was not such a problem.
“In general, four to seven was definitely set aside time for sports,” Morse says. “Academics are clearly first—that’s why you’re here. But when a lot of classes are being offered at times that aren’t accommodating at all…People aren’t always being considerate that they have athletes in their mix.”
In fact, the low number of social studies and English concentrators among varsity athletes, compared to the rest of the student body, might be explained by the structure of tutorials, which tend to meet later in the afternoon when most teams have practice and are not as flexible as section times.
Some argue that the scheduling hurdles thrown up before athletes at Harvard are symptomatic of a mishandling of college athletics at the administrative level. The lack of sensitivity the administration has for varsity athletes, they say, contributes to the stereotyping and academic stereotyping of athletes on campus.
“I do feel that Harvard, by and large, does not do a very good job of supporting their athletes and recognizing the amount of time and work that goes into college athletics,” says Elizabeth L. Blotky ’06, a varsity volleyball player and history concentrator. “Compared to many other Division I schools, Harvard is definitely a lot less supportive, sympathetic, and commending of athletes, especially women’s sports.”
Gross says the College has made efforts in recent years to ensure that student-athletes don’t have to sacrifice lectures for practice time.
“We have been working with the coaches to provide some more flexibility, and to recognize that for all of our students, academics comes first,” Gross says, refuting the claim that athletes are unable to concentrate in certain field. “I don’t think participation in any sport precludes concentration in any area,” Gross says. “There are clusters, but they may just reflect rational choices made by the students.”
TRUE ACADEMES
There are teams, of course, that sport a diverse range of concentrations. Just as the women’s lightweight crew leans towards the hard sciences, their male lightweight counterparts can boast of the one of four classics concentrators in all of varsity athletics, one of five computer science majors and one of two religion majors. One women’s heavyweight rower, Anna R. Rosenblum ’06, is one of just a handful of classical archaeology majors in the college. Morning practices notwithstanding, the crews are, percentage-wise, among the most diverse teams on campus—a phenomenon that is, at least in part, due to the prevalence of prep school educations among their members.
Those backgrounds point to higher socioeconomic standing and less concern with majors that are perceived as yielding higher paying jobs.
Women’s teams, as a whole, are more diverse in terms of concentrations than men’s teams. Teams that typically attract more walk-on players, such as crew and track and field, also tend to have a greater variety of majors than the sports that recruit more heavily.
Even on the heavily lopsided football team, though, there are students who have opted out of the econ route in favor of a concentration that interests them.
Robert J. Everett ’05, an engineering sciences concentrator on the football team, started his Harvard career in the economics department “mostly because a lot of other football players were doing it.” His switch to engineering sciences at the end of last year means that the senior has had to petition for an extra year at Harvard—during which he will not play football.
Everett says that while he made his life much harder by switching majors, he feels no regrets.
“I wouldn’t let a sport stand in the way of my concentration,” Everett says. “I already devote enough time during the year both in-season and out, I wouldn’t let that commitment force me to concentrate in something I’m not interested in just to fit my schedule.”
Zak Farkes, the starting shortstop for Harvard’s varsity baseball team and Crimson home run record holder, is the only English major on the baseball team. Farkes, who does much of his reading on the bus to and from games (“It’s a lot more interesting than watching ‘The Rock’ or ‘Major League’ for the hundredth time,” he says) and submits many of his papers by e-mail, has found that English and baseball actually complement one another.
“After a long practice I can unwind with a book where I don’t think ec or gov majors look at their texts in the same way,” Farkes says. “I’d say the biggest problem is scheduling practices and sections.”
Too bad that’s about as easy as shedding the gov jock label he might as well have sewn into his DHAs.
