550 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVII. No. 692 



schools. They agree also with the opinions in 

 letters recently received from preparatory 

 schools and universities in answer to a ques- 

 tionnaire. From this mass of statistics it may 

 be safely predicated thus early in our study 

 that, unless special means are employed to 

 debar low-stand men or keep them up in their 

 studies, or both, the men on varsity teams will 

 be found below their classmates in scholarship. 



Some will object to this that, while the facts 

 are true regarding the rank and file of 

 athletes, the great athletes, who stand head and 

 shoulders above their team mates, will gen- 

 erally be found to be great scholars also. 



An unusual opportunity was given at Am- 

 herst to test the validity of this statement in 

 1905. An all- Amherst football team was 

 selected by competent judges and published in 

 the college paper. Of the eleven men chosen 

 four were above the college average in rank, 

 seven below it, and the average of the team fell 

 about five per cent, below the average of the 

 non-athletes. While these figures do not prove 

 the assertion that great athletes are not up to 

 college average, it does furnish interesting 

 evidence to refute the statement made above, 

 and is a result quite the reverse from that at 

 which President Hyde arrived in his study of 

 fifteen years ago, in which he found that the 

 best athletes were the best scholars of the 

 athletic class. 



Granting that the men on varsity teams are 

 below their classmates in rank, is the four per 

 cent, difference worthy of consideration? The 

 bursar of the University of Pennsylvania con- 

 siders it negligible; Professor Foster thinks it 

 "so small as to overthrow two thirds of the 

 a pn'ori assumptions regarding the excessive 

 injury of intercollegiate games to the scholar- 

 ship of the men who play." If it is negligible, 

 then an inquiry into whether this inferiority 

 is the result of athletics would scarce repay 

 us. 



An analysis of these averages of athletic 

 men is of interest as showing in part why they 

 are lower than those of their classmates and 

 whether the disparity may be summarily dis- 

 missed. 



Such an analysis we have shown on Chart 



III. by distributing the athletes according to 

 their rank, after Galton's method. 



At the bottom of the chart will be seen the 

 grades from 45 per cent, to 95 per cent. At 

 the sides are percents from to 26. The per 

 cent, of athletes who attain each grade is indi- 

 cated by a dotted horizontal line drawn above 

 that grade at the proper level. The height of 

 this line, then, will indicate the number of 

 athletes per hundred who attained the sub- 

 jacent grade. 



Continuous horizontal lines have also been 

 drawn on this chart to show the distribution 

 of the grades of the non-athletic students. 

 The chart represents 212 different athletes 

 appearing a total of 531 times, because some 

 of them were members of more than one team. 

 The ranks of athletes in the later classes were 

 added to these, but they made no material 

 difference in the result. 



The most evident thing shown by this chart 

 is that the low averages of the athletic men 

 are due to their greater per cent, of low grade 

 and their lesser per cent, of high-grade men. 

 This is especially noticeable between 50 and 65 

 per cent., where there were two or three times 

 as many athletes per 100 as non-athletes, and 

 between 85 and 95 per cent., where there are 

 over three times as many non-athletes as 

 athletes. Between 65 per cent, and 80 per 

 cent., comprising three fifths of the whole 

 class, there is not much difference in the num- 

 ber at each grade. 



This marked inequality between athletes and 

 non-athletes is due mostly to the football men. 

 About six times as many football men have 

 grades between 55 and 60 as the non-athletic 

 class, and seven times as many non-athletes 

 have grades from 85 to 90 as have football 

 men. The track men make the best showing 

 and the baseball men are intermediate in the 

 averages. 



Is it worth while for us, then, to go farther. 

 Having seen that a difference of about four 

 per cent, exists between the scholarship of the 

 athlete and his classmates, and in favor of the 

 latter, and having also, by this analysis, ascer- 

 tained to what kind of marks it is due, will it 

 repay us to find out whether this inferiority 



