Is the Recruiting Problem Deeper than Talent Evaluation?

[drquigley]

As a member of the Class of 1968 I have watched GU transform itself from a typical private Catholic College catering to the children of middle class families, many of whose parents had never attended college, into a very exclusive, upper class private school catering to the children of the wealthy. Tuition back in 1968 was less than $2,000 a semester and off campus housing could be found for less than $100 a month (especially if you had a roommate or two). Sure the facilities were basic. Anyone remember old fashioned dorms with 2 bathrooms per floor, a pay phone at the end of the hall, and cafeteria food that drove many of us to Weismillers? My occasional visits to campus just make me shake my head. What the heck is the New South cafeteria supposed to be? I've seen worse lounges in luxury hotels. Several years ago I brought my high school senior daughter to campus to see what she thought of GU (not that I could have afforded to send her if she wanted to attend). Surprisingly she said she felt very uncomfortable. Being raised in a middle class household in a small Pa. town she felt that the students she saw all looked too "preppy". She knew that outside of class she would have a hard time socializing with them. Back in 1968 we had some of this but nothing like GU has today. Yes the student body is much more racially and gender diverse but the overall atmosphere, both on and off campus, is much more cosmopolitan, wealthy, and generally imposing and uncomfortable if you come from families with low or moderate incomes. What I'm getting at is that this socio-economic milieu may be hurting our ability to recruit kids to play ball at GU, or once here getting them to stay. I realize our sister Catholic BE schools have also become much more expensive and exclusive but I can't imagine that Nova, Xavier, Creighton, Marquette, etc have the same upperclass aroma that GU has developed. I have nephews and nieces who went to Marquette and Providence and they agree that GU has a markedly different (some would say stuck up) student body than their alma maters. Anyone else thought of this? Comments?

[SDHoya]

Duke is 10 times preppier than Georgetown, and their recruiting seems to be ok.

Yes Georgetown has changed, but not in any way unique from other similar elite institutions.

[RusskyHoya]

There's certainly a fair amount of truth to your observations, drquigley, but as SDHoya noted, Georgetown is hardly alone in this. Our Big East brethren aren't in quite the same rarefied stratum - for better or worse - but not for lack of trying. Providence is now at $45,400 tuition and $60,400 estimated total cost of attendance per year. Georgetown is only a shade higher at $48,611 in tuition, though the higher DC cost of living pushes up estimated cost of attendance to $66,971. Villanova actually has a higher tuition sticker price at $50,554, although the even lower cost of living leads to a $64,832 estimated annual cost. So these schools are following Georgetown - and just about every other competitive college - in providing ever-more amenities and opportunities, which comes with significant costs.

Those numbers can be misleading in any number of ways, of course. About 40% of Georgetown students receive financial aid at present, and that percentage will likely climb (Charlie Deacon has flat out stated that it *should* be at least 50%). This is where appearances can be a bit deceiving. While I also came from a much less privileged background (financially, anyway) than the average Hoya, and there were definitely some awkward moments along the way as a result, I found plenty of people with whom I could socialize - some preppy and some not. The 'polos and pearls' set (or whatever the equivalent thereof is these days...) may stand out, especially if it's not what you're used to, but they are neither the norm nor a monolith unto themselves. I knew more than a few kids who could pass for preppy on the basis of a couple of outfits... that they bought with work study and summer jobs and made sacrifices to afford.

Aaaanyway, while the socioeconomic makeup at Georgetown definitely skews more 1% compared to the other nine Big East members (although in my experience Villanova isn't far behind), that's not much different from a number of other schools that nonetheless maintain top-flight athletics programs. Notre Dame, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt - heck, even Baylor, Gonzaga, and St. Mary's College aren't too far behind, to say nothing of Wake Forest or SMU (jokingly known as Southern Millionaires University). Meanwhile, while many other schools have little to offer outside the campus gates, Georgetown has the nation's capital at students disposal. For example, since we're talking about the social here: more than a few Georgetown basketball players (Alonzo immediately comes to mind) have found Howard University to be a great source of social life.

[drquigley]

Jan 1, 2018 12:53:34 GMT -5 SDHoya said:

Duke is 10 times preppier than Georgetown, and their recruiting seems to be ok.

Yes Georgetown has changed, but not in any way unique from other similar elite institutions.

Good point about Duke - and probably other "elite" institutions. But is Raleigh Durham and the cities where some of these other institutions are located as wealthy and as "imposing" as Georgetown and other Northwest D.C. neighborhoods? Plus, if you only plan on staying a year or two the exposure you get from a Duke probably offsets the preppiness of these schools. I look forward to hearing from others, especially those closest to some of our recent recruits, to see if they have heard any comments about the comfort level the recruits feel when they arrive at GU. BTW, back in the day, the polo and pearls set were simply, derisively, referred to as Hoyas by those of us with coming from less privileged families.

[iowa80]

Doc, I must've hung out with the wrong crowd. I matriculated a bit after you (but soon enough to have Quigley in Gaston Hall), and the school was (almost) uniformly northeast prep from my perspective. We used to have to navigate around the MG's and Austin Healey's just to get to the stairs of the Tombs, and then go to polo matches in Potomac.  Try that for "diversity." 

[calhoya]

My son is a recent graduate from GULC. He had some regular interaction with the Administration on the main campus through his job the last two years. His views were always that the undergraduate campus had very good ethnic and religious diversity and not enough racial or economic diversity. Part of that undoubtedly was due to his own insecurities in a very different environment than he was accustomed to and not as a result of any treatment he received at either the graduate school or the undergraduate campus.

[Nevada Hoya]

Whew! I was in the class of 1966. I believe, if my memory is correct, that the whole cost of four years (tuition and room and board) was $8K. I got a $2K NDEA loan (which I paid off over 10 years at the rate of 3% per year), and also got a $2K scholarship (when merit counted). The polo crowd was mainly from the FS South American students, although students would go and watch the games (I never did get over there). But most of my classmates were from the middle class, so we all had the same background. Of course, we did not have the diversity that GU now has. I believe there were two African-Americans in my class and one African (from Kenya, who graduated in three years, played soccer, and went to med school). Unfortunately, one of the African-Americans did not return for his sophomore year (also two of my other friends did not return).

My son went to the University of Portland, the Catholic university in Oregon. He graduated in 2002, and we were fortunate that we did not have to pay more than $20K per year. The tuition and room and board has risen, of course, over the last 15 years, but UP tried to get financial aid for many of the students, my son being one. And athletically Portland has found their niche by emphasizing soccer and cross country, with the women having two NCAA titles in soccer, and the men XC runners came in 2nd this year in the NCAA championship.

[drquigley]

Jan 1, 2018 16:55:31 GMT -5 iowa80 said:

Doc, I must've hung out with the wrong crowd. I matriculated a bit after you (but soon enough to have Quigley in Gaston Hall), and the school was (almost) uniformly northeast prep from my perspective. We used to have to navigate around the MG's and Austin Healey's just to get to the stairs of the Tombs, and then go to polo matches in Potomac.  Try that for "diversity." 

Yes we were mostly from eastern catholic prep schools but those schools were still very affordable for middle class parents so while we dressed very preppy we were nowhere near the kids coming from today's prep schools and with parents who can afford the $60+k per year tuition. To show you how the GU image has changed, when I tell locals that I went to GU they uniformly either; 1) say I thought Georgetown was a "black" school, or 2) they look at me like I must be very smart and/or very rich. Of course, back then, with the exception of the East campus Foreign Service and ILL schools, the college was pretty much like other eastern catholic jesuit liberal arts colleges: Nova, Fordham, Holy Cross, Seton Hall, Providence etc. But I've always believed that the administration's efforts (fueled by serious "Ivy Envy") to transform GU into an academically elite college also turned it into an upper class haven for smart, but exceptionally rich, kids. And thus this thread. Seeing how much trouble we've been having recruiting and keeping top notch players I wonder if it isn't the recruiters but the fact that some kids just don't think they'd "fit in" here.

[tashoya]

I have no idea of the answer to this particular question. It's an interesting one to have posed that I really haven't thought about since my time in school. The couple of guys that I was acquainted with back then lived a very different college life than I did. So much so, I remember thinking then, that it was almost as if they had gone to a different school than did I. At the time, it was mostly due to the much more stringent schedule that the guys had in comparison to my own. They were almost their own community within the school community. With regard to the two guys I knew a bit, part of that was by necessity and part of that was by choice. What little "social" time they did have, they split between Georgetown and Howard. According to them, not only did they like Howard (read girls) but it was also a way for them to get out of the Georgetown bubble that they lived in most of the time. For me and my friends, it was going out into the city (read bars) and going to Catholic/Trinity/GW/MD from time to time.

I only mean to say that, as far as I know, the basketball guys especially seemed to have had their own school within a school. There were guys from time to time that were more like typical students but, for the most part, they were a pretty insular group back in the mid nineties. I remember feeling like that must have sucked for them to an extent but also thinking that it sucked for the rest of us too. They were our classmates and, even today, it's not like Georgetown is a huge school. To treat them as special was great when there were games but to not be able to treat them just like regular kids when there weren't didn't seem fair to a group of guys that not only handled their classes but spent a TON of time doing their best to represent our school. Other athletes, it seemed, had a much easier time being "normal" students too most of the year. I'm not sure if that's because most of the other athletes I knew weren't scholarship athletes (some were, just not in MBB) or for other reasons like just feeling more comfortable around people with backgrounds more similar to their own. For me, I didn't know many people with backgrounds like mine. And that was both good and bad. But I'm glad that I was forced a bit out of my comfort zone in retrospect. Of course, in typical college fashion, most of that bonding/figuring out came in the middle of the night either in a dorm or in a bar. I don't know that that chance is as available to the basketball players in particular because of the added demands/restrictions on them.

[RusskyHoya]

Jan 1, 2018 21:45:22 GMT -5 drquigley said:

But I've always believed that the administration's efforts (fueled by serious "Ivy Envy") to transform GU into an academically elite college also turned it into an upper class haven for smart, but exceptionally rich, kids. And thus this thread. Seeing how much trouble we've been having recruiting and keeping top notch players I wonder if it isn't the recruiters but the fact that some kids just don't think they'd "fit in" here.

So, once more, but a bit louder this time: Georgetown is in no way, shape, or form unique in this respect. Recruited athletes, particularly in the revenue sports, are a breed apart on basically every D-I campus. While socioeconomics does play a role in a campus's climate, and can even make its way into a recruiting pitch (big state schools can promise Big Man on Campus status in a way that smaller, private schools cannot), Georgetown is in a similar boat as many other institutions. If anything, its urban location, proximity to centers of black cultural life, and reputation as a school where blackness is a respected identity and heritage place it in a more advantageous position than many other schools. But given the privileged position and ready-made social scene that basketball players arrive into (they ain't exactly roaming the cafeteria looking for someone to sit with at lunch, ya know?), any such effects are marginal at most.

Also, for what its worth, the prep schools of today have robust financial aid and diversity programs that rival many colleges - the kid who went to a St. Joseph's Prep or even a Northfield Mount Hermon may well be more familiar/comfortable with peers from all manner of backgrounds than the one who went to school in a small PA town...

[DFW HOYA]

Jan 1, 2018 22:34:30 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

While socioeconomics does play a role in a campus's climate, and can even make its way into a recruiting pitch (big state schools can promise Big Man on Campus status in a way that smaller, private schools cannot), Georgetown is in a similar boat as many other institutions. If anything, its urban location, proximity to centers of black cultural life, and reputation as a school where blackness is a respected identity and heritage place it in a more advantageous position than many other schools.

I view the cultural angle as overstated. A 17 year old kid is not choosing college based on the issue of cultural life, they go where they can win. Clearly, none of the players in tonight's national semifinal see Tuscaloosa, AL or Clemson, SC as a cultural mecca; or, if Washington DC was so admired by high school athletes, where is the rush to play basketball at Howard or American or GW to be a part of all this?

The earlier part of the thread is more interesting because it is bigger than basketball. Georgetown was never a working class college the way St. John's or Seton Hall was, but you had a mix of upper income and middle income students. Into the 1970's it was also a school whose peers were BC, Holy Cross and Fordham, where the applicant pool was more likely to be kids from St. Joe's Prep and Chaminade than Exeter and Lawrenceville.

The move to full-need admissions in 1978 realigned Georgetown to a different admissions pool and with it, a lot more high-income and low-income applicants. The cost of education has squeezed out the middle class applicants of the past--not just at Georgetown, but particularly so. Today's peers are places like Duke, Penn, and Brown, with high-income applicants that see Georgetown on their level. The kid from Central Catholic HS whose dad works for for the postal service isn't looking at GU because their counselor is telling them "you can't get in there".

There's a larger issue--namely, competitive schools are becoming more insular and the skew to upper incomes leaves a lot of kids (and perspectives) on the outside. Here's a link to a 2010 article from a Princeton researcher that asked some provocative questions. Excerpt:

"Most elite universities seem to have little interest in diversifying their student bodies when it comes to the numbers of born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, lower-middle-class Catholics, working class "white ethnics," social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children, or older students first starting out in college after raising children or spending several years in the workforce. Students in these categories are often very rare at the more competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League. While these kinds of people would surely add to the diverse viewpoints and life-experiences represented on college campuses, in practice "diversity" on campus is largely a code word for the presence of a substantial proportion of those in the underrepresented racial minority groups."

www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Pub_Minding%20the%20campus%20combined%20files.pdf

[dailey247]

Jan 1, 2018 23:25:47 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

The earlier part of the thread is more interesting because it is bigger than basketball.

Agreed (and perhaps that means I think this thread should be moved to another board?) and to throw another random anecdote into the mix: I, my brother, and my 4 sisters are all 4th generation Hoyas, and depending on how loose you want to get with the definition of family, I have upwards of 50 relatives with Georgetown degrees. Needless to say, it's kind of a big part of our shared history. The freaking Jesuit motto is stamped on the headstone of the family burial plot. But, so far, we're 0-for-7 with the next generation even applying to Georgetown, so the appeal does seem to be different. And I recall from my own time as a student thinking that there were a lot of people who enrolled because they didn't get into Harvard or Yale or whatever their #1 choice was. Probably asking too much of admissions to be able to read kids minds and know if they REALLY want to go to Georgetown, but I think it definitely affects student life.

But back to basketball - elite athletes are a culture unto themselves, and their experience isn't very reliant on who their classmates are. The most attractive thing to them is probably other elite athletes to be their teammates, so we should recruit some of those and then we can recruit some more of those.

[Bigs"R"Us]

There were a lot of students that attended GU in the late 80s because they didn't get into Harvard, Yale or Princeton. There were also many who got into Penn, Cornell and Duke who opted for GU. It would be interesting to know for what percentage of applicants was GU their first choice. My kids are nearing college age and the thinking is still the same- apply to the top schools and attend the best option.

[ewingitrust]

Don't think recruiting/talent evaluation will be a problem under Ewing. Just a thought.

[badgerhoya]

Jan 2, 2018 13:05:52 GMT -5 dailey247 said:

Jan 1, 2018 23:25:47 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

The earlier part of the thread is more interesting because it is bigger than basketball.

Probably asking too much of admissions to be able to read kids minds and know if they REALLY want to go to Georgetown, but I think it definitely affects student life.

Dunno about you, but having been part of the alumni interview process for a while now, it's fairly easy to tease out which kids are looking to come to GU because "it's a good school / I'm applying to all Ivies / etc." vs. those who have looked at the whole of the GU experience and said "that's what I want for me." Not to say that it's a perfect analysis, but I think it's a lot easier to come off as interested on a written application than it is when someone is asking a direct question face to face.

[Bigs"R"Us]

Agree. I haven't interviewed in a while, but I went 0-3 last time out. 2 Jesuit private school kids who both demonstrated strong interest in GU, but were both denied admission. The other kid clearly had GU as a fallback and opted for Columbia.

[CTHoya08]

We're getting pretty far afield from basketball recruiting , but I wanted to chime in on what I think is a false dichotomy being set up here, and which I have seen in other threads in the past. I think people are greatly overstating the divide between "Ivy League Rejects" and "People Who Want to Be at Georgetown." Some posters seem to think that any student who would have preferred to attend Harvard or Yale if admitted there is somehow incompatible with falling into the latter group, and that students are somehow matriculating at Georgetown without considering the unique aspects of the university or without any buy-in to the school. There are dozens of "good schools." Just about anyone who is admitted at Georgetown is likely to have the option of attending more than one, so I doubt very many students pick GU because it's the only decent option they have.

And let's not forget that we're talking about 17- and 18-year-old kids here. It's very easy to transition from "disappointed I won't be attending Yale" to "ecstatic that I'll be attending Georgetown" in the five months from admission decisions to the start of fall classes. I'm frankly a bit put off by the suggestion that GU should hold it against an applicant if his first choice is somewhere else.

As to the theory posited by the OP, I don't think the general student body has much of an effect on recruiting. As others have noted, there are other "elite" and "preppy" schools that have strong sports programs. (And even some of the big state schools look preppy if you're into the Greek scene. That doesn't seem to drive recruits away from the SEC.)

[drquigley]

I started this thread because I felt, based on recent recruiting and retention problems, that perhaps there was something more at work. Reading everyones comments leads me to believe that my concern that the socio economic milieu surrounding GU and the Georgetown community hurts recruitment probably is not as big a factor in these recruiting problems as I had feared. Sadly, the changes I have witnessed over the years at GU seem to be very common among most elite private schools and are symptoms of a larger problem facing our country. The chasm between classes has widened tremendously over the years and what I hear from commenters is that black athletes, like anyone from a less privileged class, at elite, private colleges have learned how to deal with it.

[RusskyHoya]

Jan 1, 2018 23:25:47 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

I view the cultural angle as overstated. A 17 year old kid is not choosing college based on the issue of cultural life, they go where they can win. Clearly, none of the players in tonight's national semifinal see Tuscaloosa, AL or Clemson, SC as a cultural mecca; or, if Washington DC was so admired by high school athletes, where is the rush to play basketball at Howard or American or GW to be a part of all this?

"Where they can win" is kind of a tough thing to pin down when ~50% of programs will have losing records. Anyway, even if it's not a primary consideration, even 17-year old recruited revenue sport athletes (and their parents!) do pay some mind to - and coaches play up things like - whether it's a big party school or one known for good academics; whether it's a quaint, tiny college town or a big city where you can go chill In Da Club of your choice; whether it's a school where there's some not-insignificant number of other kids with whom you might share something in common... or not.

I do think DC is an advantage for all the DC schools, even in the area of athletics recruiting (man, it's like half of our football recruiting pitch at this point, isn't it?). That doesn't mean there aren't countervailing or offsetting disadvantages. But AU and GW have had pretty good success at their respective levels of basketball competition - and I know for a fact that part of the recruiting pitch for "why GW, not St. Bonaventure or Dayton" and "why AU, not Holy Cross or Lehigh" touches on what DC has to offer.

Jan 1, 2018 23:25:47 GMT -5 DFW HOYA said:

There's a larger issue--namely, competitive schools are becoming more insular and the skew to upper incomes leaves a lot of kids (and perspectives) on the outside. Here's a link to a 2010 article from a Princeton researcher that asked some provocative questions. Excerpt:

"Most elite universities seem to have little interest in diversifying their student bodies when it comes to the numbers of born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah's Witnesses, lower-middle-class Catholics, working class "white ethnics," social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children, or older students first starting out in college after raising children or spending several years in the workforce. Students in these categories are often very rare at the more competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League. While these kinds of people would surely add to the diverse viewpoints and life-experiences represented on college campuses, in practice "diversity" on campus is largely a code word for the presence of a substantial proportion of those in the underrepresented racial minority groups."

www.princeton.edu/~tje/files/Pub_Minding%20the%20campus%20combined%20files.pdf

There's little question that some types of diversity - in particular, the types tracked and reported by the Department of Education - receive greater emphasis from administrators than others. Some of the groups mentioned are believed, rightly or wrongly, to be not particularly compatible with the model of elite undergraduate college experience as residential environment focused on holistic development (or "formation," to use Jesuit-speak) during the transition to adulthood. Older students, those with spouse and kids, etc. don't quite align with that model - and "commuter school" is practically a dirty word these days. Since those circumstances are considered life choices, rather than immutable characteristics, and since most non-traditional students aren't really looking for the traditional residential college life with a noticeably younger cohort anyway, there hasn't been much of an impetus from either direction.

For what its worth, the elite schools are also the ones that tend to be best able to marshal resources to support groups with particular backgrounds and needs like those with disabilities or veterans (look at the schools on this list, for instance: www.cnbc.com/2017/09/18/the-10-best-universities-for-veterans.html). They absolutely do take geographic diversity into account - I can vouch from first-hand knowledge that applicants from low-enrollment states do get a bump, and holistic reviews identify and give weight to kids who come from working class backgrounds or rural/disadvantages areas, kids with disabilities, and other special considerations. "Lower-middle-class Catholics" describes many Hispanic students, whom elite schools are indeed actively prioritizing (unless the author meant to include the adjective "white" there but decided to leave it implied). Georgetown is also not unique among elite schools in cultivating relationships with certain community colleges (e.g., NOVA, Montgomery College, and Miami Dade) to identify the most promising transfer candidates, who often fit into some of the aforementioned categories.

At the end of the day, elite institutions are almost by definition unrepresentative and unreflective of the average, the mean, or the norm. There are some very valid reasons for wanting to make sure they don't become too detached from mainstream society, but these schools are unlikely to ever be a microcosm of the country as a whole. Were society writ large moving along swimmingly, it wouldn't be that big of an issue and wouldn't get anywhere near the disproportionate attention it receives.. but obviously that's not where we find ourselves right now.

[TC]

Jan 1, 2018 16:55:31 GMT -5 iowa80 said:

Doc, I must've hung out with the wrong crowd. I matriculated a bit after you (but soon enough to have Quigley in Gaston Hall), and the school was (almost) uniformly northeast prep from my perspective. We used to have to navigate around the MG's and Austin Healey's just to get to the stairs of the Tombs, and then go to polo matches in Potomac.  Try that for "diversity." 

Our major recruit at the moment is a very preppy kid whose Dad is an NBA agent, would be matriculating from Duke, who seems to love to take pictures of himself in front of really really expensive cars.

Our major 2019 hope is a kid whose father played in the NBA who attends Archbishop Molloy.

Our major 2016 recruit who we signed but lost attended one of the most expensive CT prep schools.

This thread makes a lot of assumptions about the demographics of the kids we recruit without really thinking too much about them.