Overview

Honorable Mention - 2022 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award Special Admission contradicts the national belief that college sports provide upward mobility opportunities. Kirsten Hextrum documents how white middle-class youth become overrepresented on college teams. Her institutional ethnography of one elite athletic and academic institution includes over 100 hours of interviews with college rowers and track & field athletes. She charts the historic and contemporary relationships between colleges, athletics, and white middle-class communities that ensure white suburban youth are advantaged in special athletic admissions. Suburban youth start ahead in college admissions because athletic merit—the competencies desired by university recruiters—requires access to vast familial, communal, and economic resources, all of which are concentrated in their neighborhoods. Their advantages increase as youth, parents, and coaches strategically invest in and engineer novel opportunities to maintain their race and class status. Thus, college sports allow white, middle-class athletes to accelerate their racial and economic advantages through admission to elite universities.

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9781978821217

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Kirsten Hextrum has perfect timing. Her work is not only topical but carefully researched and very well-argued. She reveals the extent of special admissions for athletes and its negative effects: on the university and, ironically, often on the athletes themselves. Special Admission is a must-read for everyone concerned with unfair college admission procedures, and especially for all those parents who are dreaming of athletic scholarships for their children. --Murray Sperber Indiana University, Bloomington, author of Beer and Circus: How Bigtime College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education With careful research and astute analysis, Kirsten Hextrum unveils the systemic ways privilege works in and through sport. Special Admission is a game-changer for anyone who cares about college sports and social justice. --Michael A. Messner Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, University of Southern California College athletics are routinely portrayed as a vehicle of social mobility. Kirsten Hextrum proves that the opposite is true. White-dominated sports, such as crew and lacrosse, offer a hidden pathway to college admissions that is known only to affluent, suburban parents. Meticulously researched and conversationally written, Special Admission exposes the fundamental unfairness and hypocrisy of college sports. It impels action. --Evan J. Mandery author of A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America Special Admission is a truly outstanding work that provides a point of informed entry into a previously largely neglected topic. It is a graphic indictment of an institution which-despite all reifying allusions to the contrary-is a highly effective engine of social differentiation. --David L. Andrews Physical Cultural Studies Research Group, University of Maryland, author of Making Sport Great Again: The Uber-Sport Assemblage, Neoliberalism, and the Trump Conjuncture

Special Admission is a truly outstanding work that provides a point of informed entry into a previously largely neglected topic. It is a graphic indictment of an institution which-despite all reifying allusions to the contrary-is a highly effective engine of social differentiation. --David L. Andrews Physical Cultural Studies Research Group, University of Maryland, author of Making Sport Great Again: The Uber-Sport Assemblage, Neoliberalism, and the Trump Conjuncture

Special Admission is a truly outstanding work that provides a point of informed entry into a previously largely neglected topic. It is a graphic indictment of an institution which-despite all reifying allusions to the contrary-is a highly effective engine of social differentiation. --David L. Andrews Physical Cultural Studies Research Group, University of Maryland, author of Making Sport Great Again: The Uber-Sport Assemblage, Neoliberalism, and the Trump Conjuncture College athletics are routinely portrayed as a vehicle of social mobility. Kirsten Hextrum proves that the opposite is true. White-dominated sports, such as crew and lacrosse, offer a hidden pathway to college admissions that is known only to affluent, suburban parents. Meticulously researched and conversationally written, Special Admission exposes the fundamental unfairness and hypocrisy of college sports. It impels action. --Evan J. Mandery author of A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America

"""Supreme Court Roundup: Voting Rights And NCAA Athletes"" interview with Kristen Hextrum-- ""WORT - ""A Public Affair"""" ""Special Admission: Dr. Kirsten Hextrum Discusses How College Athletic Recruitment Favors White Suburbia"" -- ""Diverse: Issues in Higher Education"" ""Readers engaging with this book can expect to understand the historical, political, and economic factors that influence current practices in college admissions, with a critical analysis about the racial and gender exclusion of non-white athletes and the concentration of resources in white, suburban areas. Central themes within the work focus on race, gender, economic status, state control and access to resources as the contextual factors that influence the favoritism of white athletes in college admissions.""-- ""International Journal of Educational Integrity"" ""What the NCAA ruling really means for student athletes"" by Faith Karimi-- ""CNN.com"" ""Special Admission is a truly outstanding work that provides a point of informed entry into a previously largely neglected topic. It is a graphic indictment of an institution which-despite all reifying allusions to the contrary-is a highly effective engine of social differentiation."" --David L. Andrews ""Physical Cultural Studies Research Group, University of Maryland, author of Making Sport Great Again"" ""Kirsten Hextrum has perfect timing. Her work is not only topical but carefully researched and very well-argued. She reveals the extent of special admissions for athletes and its negative effects: on the university and, ironically, often on the athletes themselves. Special Admission is a must-read for everyone concerned with unfair college admission procedures, and especially for all those parents who are dreaming of athletic scholarships for their children.""--Murray Sperber ""Indiana University, Bloomington, author of Beer and Circus: How Bigtime College Sports Is Crippling "" ""With careful research and astute analysis, Kirsten Hextrum unveils the systemic ways privilege works in and through sport. Special Admission is a game-changer for anyone who cares about college sports and social justice.""--Michael A. Messner ""Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies, University of Southern California"" (11/8/2020 12:00:00 AM) ""College athletics are routinely portrayed as a vehicle of social mobility. Kirsten Hextrum proves that the opposite is true. White-dominated sports, such as crew and lacrosse, offer a hidden pathway to college admissions that is known only to affluent, suburban parents. Meticulously researched and conversationally written, Special Admission exposes the fundamental unfairness and hypocrisy of college sports. It impels action.""--Evan J. Mandery ""author of A Wild Justice: The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America"""

Author Information

KIRSTEN HEXTRUM is an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies and a faculty affiliate in women's and gender studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma.

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