It’d be surprising if that stopped being true in college, in fact. It’s definitely still true from about 6th grade(!) on, at least in lots of schools. Ask some teachers (who aren’t also coaches) what that dynamic looks like—all the stuff about star athletes getting away with bad behavior, coach-teachers letting them get away with doing almost nothing in their classes, and other teachers being pressured to give them higher grades than they earned is still there, straight out of an 80s movie.

The special treatment star athletes get in many US universities with well-funded prominent sports programs, especially American football and basketball, is well-documented. Even not-so-star athletes get the benefit of the doubt. What reasons do we have to believe Ivy League universities are different? They may emphasize different sports – crew or field hockey instead of football – but the results are the same.