In Pursuit of Excellence

Alfred Bloom was the President of Swarthmore College, a small liberal-arts college, from 1991-2009. In order to improve the long-term quality of the college’s athletic program, he and the college leadership decided to reduce the number of intercollegiate sports teams at Swarthmore from twenty-four to twenty-one. This move included ending the football program, which was an extremely controversial decision, and it received a great deal of notice in the press. Bloom explained that the decision was motivated “by a desire to… give students across sports a sense of quality of play, a sense of accomplishment, and a chance of actually being successful in competition… it was really about providing excellence. In athletics—because of the degree of specialization that’s taking place—if you want to have excellence, you have to have actually fewer teams.” In other words, because having good sports teams means admitting students based on that talent, President Bloom decided that Swarthmore should focus on a wider set of student interests and pursue excellence among a smaller set of teams.

Alfred Bloom was the President of Swarthmore College, a relatively small college in the United States from 1991-2009. In 2000, in a move to improve the long-term quality of Swarthmore’s athletic program, the Board of Managers reduced the number of intercollegiate teams supported by the college from 24 teams to 21 teams. As a result, Swarthmore no longer offered wrestling, football, or women’s badminton. 

The decision to end the football program was extremely controversial at the school and also received a great deal of notice in the press. This is what President Bloom had to say about this decision: 

“I see the decision as being principally motivated by a desire to create an athletic program that will give students… a sense of quality of play, a sense of accomplishment, and a chance of actually being successful in competition that they are looking for. That’s one hand. And on the other hand… allowing us to continue the diversity of the class that we want in terms of having the [mix] of student population that we want for the kind of education that we feel is important.

And… you’ve got to recruit a certain number of students for each sport to provide leadership in that sport… Well, you can’t do it with only 370 students in each year for twenty-four sports. And you certainly can’t do it if one of them is football, which takes twenty-one [students] alone.

There were two choices: either [we eliminate some sports teams, or we] take more kids in terms of athletic talent as opposed to other kinds of talents… kids who are interested in music and other kids who are interested in engineering and other kids who have a lot of experience in social change in poor communities. And we decided that we couldn’t [admit more students just based on athletics, so] there is no way to have enough leadership for twenty-four sports. [So we eliminated a few teams, including football.]

And so it’s about creating a sense of diverse community, and at the same time having excellence in everything you do… There are people who were very unhappy about it and construed some of the process differently from what I just said. But, I think there are plenty of facts to substantiate what we all think we did, and what the board thinks we did…

It’s made me feel all the more that this school needs to represent leadership in being the place that demands quality, that demands educational excellence, and that educates people to see sometimes that requires change in order to preserve that mission… In athletics, because of the degree of specialization that’s taking place if you want to have excellence, you have to have actually fewer teams. Because you’ve got only 370 kids in a class and you can’t take too many where athletic consideration is an essential part of the admissions decision.”

President Bloom weighed many factors in his decision-making process, and chief among them is his understanding of what makes an excellent institution of higher education. Guided by his convictions, and by his particular beliefs and values, he considers issues of quality versus issues of quantity. 

Do you agree with his decision? Was there another route he could have taken? What are the various factors he weighs in order to make this choice?