In one of the most ridiculous college admissions policies yet, more universities are deciding to hand out chess scholarships in hopes of attracting students the colleges would not normally attract.
Is it not bad enough that colleges already give out scholarships for sports in general, but now to include chess among one of the reasons why someone may get in over someone else (with maybe a better academic record) is astounding to say the least.
While the logic is that these scholarships will bring in students who would not normally have applied to the university, on what basis this constitutes diversifying the campus is difficult to understand on any basic level of understanding. Universities were originally supposed to aspire to goals of having academically diverse campuses. In today’s complicated world however, admissions officers have to worry about having the right racially mixed campus, an even number of students in each of the majors and a good number of athletes to boost the university’s image.
Among the colleges who now award chess scholarships, are the University of Connecticut, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and the University of Texas at Dallas. All of these schools are part of their respective states’ public university systems all of which were created to offer students an alternative to costlier private universities.
The University of Texas has awarded 25 such chess scholarships and the University of Connecticut has admitted seven students based on the chess criteria.
While also opening university doors to a wider audience, some colleges also hope to raise the status of the university since sports are held with such high regard within both the high school and college systems in this country. Many of these admissions officers assume that even if no one else in the country has ever heard of their school, there is a potential that one of the chess scholarship recipients may be so good, he or she could bring a little notoriety to the university’s campus. This is a highly unlikely scenario, but it can’t hurt to dream, can it? In this case, it may hurt a lot.
While somewhat noble in intentions, the implications behind such policy bring university systems farther away from their desired goal of admitting students based on a set of objective standards. While it may be idealistic to assume that these standards are objective, it should not be too much to ask that our university systems maintain academic standards and goals.
More and more universities are steering farther away from an academic focus in search of more money or national prestige. Instead of attempting to offer deserving students the opportunity to learn on their campus, universities have become disillusioned with the idea that everything is in a name and that to be the best university a campus must have the best sports team or performing arts department rather than providing quality college educations.
The impllicatios behind offering chess scholarships are that to be admitted into a university, a student does not always have to have had decent grades in high school. Instead, they can be good at something completely unrelated to education. This isn’t fair, but then of course, to be fair, universities would have to get rid of their money-generating sports departments, which will not be happening any time soon.
