<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>lofatdairy</author><text>Cui bono?&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of problems with the Ivy League, the lack of athletic scholarships are one of the few things they do absolutely right. The thing is that athletics are less, not more democratic as a distribution mechanism for admission slots. The author seems to be under the mistaken belief that most of these slots would be available for your football and basketball players, where stories of rising from poverty are commonplace at the highest level. That&amp;#x27;s simply not the case at Ivies. You think underrepresented and the economically disadvantaged are rowing or playing squash or fencing or golfing or diving at the level where this would matter? Sure, there are ways of making this equitable, but that&amp;#x27;s not solved by the scope of this argument.&lt;p&gt;The fact is that athletics has been a backdoor for admissions, and always used to exclude, not to include, those outside the upper class. The college admission scandal showed as much, with the Stanford sailing coach. It has historical roots in excluding Jewish students, and it&amp;#x27;s currently used to exclude Asian students among maintaining a proportion of elite students.&lt;p&gt;Certainly, it looks like price fixing, and I don&amp;#x27;t have a problem with that argument, but I would prefer is more universities took courage to actually focus on academics like chicago, caltech, mit, etc.</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-11/ivy-league-athletic-scholarship-lawsuit-exposes-cartel-like-behavior</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>nobodyandproud</author><text>The author seems to have an axe to grind.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The need for diversity in education is as vital today as ever. But it’s not clear whether the Ivy Agreement’s ban on athletic scholarships actually promotes that end. One might even wonder whether, by not competing over sports stars, the schools are reducing the diversity of their student bodies.&lt;p&gt;Yet later admits:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But recent research tells us that fielding a great team predicts higher alumni giving only to the athletics department. And a 2005 study  found little connection between on-field success and giving, at least among those alums who regularly attended sporting events.&lt;p&gt;Higher education became corrupted with money from athletics and I wish more schools took note of:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; In the Ivy Group Agreement, the universities defend their ban on athletic scholarships as part of a general policy “that the players shall be truly representative of the student body and not composed of a group of specially recruited athletes.”</text><parent_chain></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Ivy League Schools Sure Look Like a Cartel</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-11/ivy-league-athletic-scholarship-lawsuit-exposes-cartel-like-behavior</url></story>