Reply #72: Having been in the academic world for many years, I know that

[Lydia Leftcoast]

there are just as many, if not more, academic scholarships for bright, poor kids than there are athletic scholarships, but the coaches will never let kids know that, because they want fresh meat for their teams.

Case in point: At the last college I worked at, there was an extremely bright young woman who had grown up in a trailer behind a gas station in rural Oregon. She had so much outright grant money that all she owed for tuition, room, and board was $2000, at a private college. This was a sum she could earn during the summer.

A student of color from a poor background who has good grades in solid subjects can write his or her own ticket, so in the case of all the would-be NBA stars who are spending all their free time on the basketball court, they'd have a much better chance to escape poverty if they buckled down and worked hard on their academics.

This is especially true at private colleges, which can sweeten the deal any way they want, in addition to what the numbers tell them. I've known of cases in which my college engaged in a bidding war with another Oregon private college to attract a bright student. But the state schools can offer good deals as well.

(About twenty years ago, the University of Minnesota's Institute of Technology became concerned about the low number of students of color enrolled, so they decided to start a recruiting program, complete with special scholarships, in Twin Cities high schools. That's when they found out that in all the high schools in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, only seven African-American students were taking pre-calc. On the basis of that information, they revised the recruiting program so that it started in eighth grade.)