[81alum]

I am curious to know 1) How exactly does Stanford's academic mission conflict with WBB's use of the portal? and 2) Is there an inherent conflict between Stanford WBB striving to become/remain a championship caliber team and Stanford's academic mission? 

That was a thoughtful post!  I've been debating putting myself on a Cardboard time out for a few months given how discouraged I am about the current situation, but you deserve an answer as best I can give one.

There is no mystery, really.  Stanford believes strongly in a four year experience for ALL its undergraduates.  Nearly all the elite universities do--this distinguishes the Ivies, Stanford, Caltech, Chicago, MIT and the like from the top land grant universities like Cal, Michigan, etc.  The elites believe (rightly or wrongly) that they should have four years to educated a student, and when that student graduates, then that student will reflect four years of influence.  They also believe (correctly, and selfishly) that students who spend four years at a university will feel a stronger bond to their alma mater and contribute more in the long run.

As a result of the four year model, all the elites tend to operate on a "replacement rate" transfer concept.  Only as many transfers are admitted as are necessary to replace those undergraduates who depart.  And very, very few Stanford undergraduates depart without a degree.  That means that there are very, very few slots available for transfer students.  The elites take enormous bragging rites in graduation percentages and thus every transfer out is a disaster from their point-of-view.  They compete with each other for the highest 4 year graduation rates, and are routinely 30 points higher than state universities.

Stanford's retention rate is so high that they only have room for 20-30 transfers in for the entire university every year.  When 3 students from WBB transfer out, it is a debacle from the enrollment management perspective, since one small sports team just created 10% of the negative statistics for the university.

None of these factors are problems for big state universities, or privates (like USC) that do not claim to have elite academic standards.  Those universities were founded on the philosophy that a high percentage of their students would be transfers.  In some states 50% of the students at such universities are CC transfers.  There have been some states that have even tried for 100%--segregating freshman/sophomore years to the community colleges and reserving junior/senior years for the big universities.  That has not worked out well for a variety of reasons, but when that was attempted the sports teams were among the few parts of such universities that actually maintained the four year experience.  They wanted their student-athletes for four years of development and training, even if the rest of the campus was primarily a 2 year campus.

Now, enter the new reality of unlimited transfers for athletes.  Which kind of university is going to be most impacted?  Those non-elites that have always had large volumes of transfer students, or the elites that have attempted to have as few as possible?  Obviously the elites will suffer while the non-elites can just take it in stride.

To complicate things further, most of the elites gave up on Div I athletics (Chicago, MIT, Caltech) or gave up on athletic scholarships (the Ivies) long ago.  There was really only one university in the world that was trying to compete at the highest level of Div I while maintaining its status as an elite university:  Stanford.  Notre Dame, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, etc would all have liked to be like Stanford--but none of them were ever really academic elite institutions like Stanford and the Ivies.

And so the changes in transfer rules (and NIL I would argue on a whole different front) were uniquely bad for one university in the nation: Stanford.  If someone wanted to design rules changes that would hurt Stanford and not hurt our competitors, this is what they might come up with.

Now, fans of Stanford sports will ask a number of plausible questions.  For example: why can't Stanford just expand the number of transfer students it admits--at least for the purposes of sports?  To this there are a few answers:

1) In order to maintain its elite academic status, Stanford wants to limit the size of its undergraduate student body.  This improves the student/faculty ratio, promotes a sense of undergraduate community, and helps Stanford maintain its prestige as the most selective university in the world.  Adding more students through transfer--who may have lower GPAs, test scores, or other stats associated with them--does not serve the academic reputation of the university well.

2) Stanford is unique among the elites in how willing it has been to support athletics.  Many of you can't see this, because you have a tendency to compare Stanford to its competitors in athletics and not to its peers academically.  The concept that a university would "privilege" a student-athlete above other students is anathema to Stanford and all the elites--they are equal to other students--at best.  If Stanford were going to start allowing large number of athletes to transfer in, then I think faculty and administration would insist on similar priorities for other kinds of students who are not athletes.  There are all kinds of students who get off to a slow start in high school but are outstanding during their first 2 years in college who might be candidates for transfer.  So why should Stanford say all 25 or so of its transfer slots should go to athletes alone?  Believe me, there would be plenty of others who would be extremely competitive--but once you go down that path you lose control of the smaller study body with a four year memory you are attempting to create. 

So, opening Stanford up broadly to athletic transfers will result in one of two things: 1) expanding the size of the Stanford student body beyond what the university has determined is optimal for its elite status, or 2) privileging athletes above other equally talented students, resulting in resentment and inequality.

Neither of these two things are serious problems at most of our competitors.  Hence, I think the rules changes we have seen in the last couple of years are uniquely bad for Stanford alone, and will inevitably lead to our further decline in the money sports and possibly other sports too.  I hope to be wrong.  But hence my depression, sadness, and even some short-tempered posts.

[81alum]

I am curious to know 1) How exactly does Stanford's academic mission conflict with WBB's use of the portal? and 2) Is there an inherent conflict between Stanford WBB striving to become/remain a championship caliber team and Stanford's academic mission? 

That was a thoughtful post!  I've been debating putting myself on a Cardboard time out for a few months given how discouraged I am about the current situation, but you deserve an answer as best I can give one.

There is no mystery, really.  Stanford believes strongly in a four year experience for ALL its undergraduates.  Nearly all the elite universities do--this distinguishes the Ivies, Stanford, Caltech, Chicago, MIT and the like from the top land grant universities like Cal, Michigan, etc.  The elites believe (rightly or wrongly) that they should have four years to educated a student, and when that student graduates, then that student will reflect four years of influence.  They also believe (correctly, and selfishly) that students who spend four years at a university will feel a stronger bond to their alma mater and contribute more in the long run.

As a result of the four year model, all the elites tend to operate on a "replacement rate" transfer concept.  Only as many transfers are admitted as are necessary to replace those undergraduates who depart.  And very, very few Stanford undergraduates depart without a degree.  That means that there are very, very few slots available for transfer students.  The elites take enormous bragging rites in graduation percentages and thus every transfer out is a disaster from their point-of-view.  They compete with each other for the highest 4 year graduation rates, and are routinely 30 points higher than state universities.

Stanford's retention rate is so high that they only have room for 20-30 transfers in for the entire university every year.  When 3 students from WBB transfer out, it is a debacle from the enrollment management perspective, since one small sports team just created 10% of the negative statistics for the university.

None of these factors are problems for big state universities, or privates (like USC) that do not claim to have elite academic standards.  Those universities were founded on the philosophy that a high percentage of their students would be transfers.  In some states 50% of the students at such universities are CC transfers.  There have been some states that have even tried for 100%--segregating freshman/sophomore years to the community colleges and reserving junior/senior years for the big universities.  That has not worked out well for a variety of reasons, but when that was attempted the sports teams were among the few parts of such universities that actually maintained the four year experience.  They wanted their student-athletes for four years of development and training, even if the rest of the campus was primarily a 2 year campus.

Now, enter the new reality of unlimited transfers for athletes.  Which kind of university is going to be most impacted?  Those non-elites that have always had large volumes of transfer students, or the elites that have attempted to have as few as possible?  Obviously the elites will suffer while the non-elites can just take it in stride.

To complicate things further, most of the elites gave up on Div I athletics (Chicago, MIT, Caltech) or gave up on athletic scholarships (the Ivies) long ago.  There was really only one university in the world that was trying to compete at the highest level of Div I while maintaining its status as an elite university:  Stanford.  Notre Dame, Northwestern, Duke, Rice, etc would all have liked to be like Stanford--but none of them were ever really academic elite institutions like Stanford and the Ivies.

And so the changes in transfer rules (and NIL I would argue on a whole different front) were uniquely bad for one university in the nation: Stanford.  If someone wanted to design rules changes that would hurt Stanford and not hurt our competitors, this is what they might come up with.

Now, fans of Stanford sports will ask a number of plausible questions.  For example: why can't Stanford just expand the number of transfer students it admits--at least for the purposes of sports?  To this there are a few answers:

1) In order to maintain its elite academic status, Stanford wants to limit the size of its undergraduate student body.  This improves the student/faculty ratio, promotes a sense of undergraduate community, and helps Stanford maintain its prestige as the most selective university in the world.  Adding more students through transfer--who may have lower GPAs, test scores, or other stats associated with them--does not serve the academic reputation of the university well.

2) Stanford is unique among the elites in how willing it has been to support athletics.  Many of you can't see this, because you have a tendency to compare Stanford to its competitors in athletics and not to its peers academically.  The concept that a university would "privilege" a student-athlete above other students is anathema to Stanford and all the elites--they are equal to other students--at best.  If Stanford were going to start allowing large number of athletes to transfer in, then I think faculty and administration would insist on similar priorities for other kinds of students who are not athletes.  There are all kinds of students who get off to a slow start in high school but are outstanding during their first 2 years in college who might be candidates for transfer.  So why should Stanford say all 25 or so of its transfer slots should go to athletes alone?  Believe me, there would be plenty of others who would be extremely competitive--but once you go down that path you lose control of the smaller study body with a four year memory you are attempting to create. 

So, opening Stanford up broadly to athletic transfers will result in one of two things: 1) expanding the size of the Stanford student body beyond what the university has determined is optimal for its elite status, or 2) privileging athletes above other equally talented students, resulting in resentment and inequality.

Neither of these two things are serious problems at most of our competitors.  Hence, I think the rules changes we have seen in the last couple of years are uniquely bad for Stanford alone, and will inevitably lead to our further decline in the money sports and possibly other sports too.  I hope to be wrong.  But hence my depression, sadness, and even some short-tempered posts.