Source: shermanreport.com
Playing a sport in college is seen as an amazing thing, kids grow up dreaming of being good enough to play in college, but is it really worth it?. An article written by the economist.com -Time for Professional Student Athletes? , By A.S./New York explains this very well from an economic standpoint. Students that play college sports are being ripped off, and scammed by the NCAA and colleges.
One of the key parts of playing a college sport is the misleading glory of an athletic scholarship. The NCAA makes billions of dollars off these athletes and all the athletes get is their tuition, and more often than not only part of their tuition. According to the economist, “It has been argued that it exploits the student athletes who cannot be paid for their talent and labor, other than their athletic scholarships.” These college athletes are essentially owned by their team working full time for their sport. The difference is that they don’t get paid and they also have to manage schoolwork on top of this. If you want to have a social live too, good luck because your live consists of a job that is extremely stressful, and extremely underpaid.
Another disadvantage of being a full time student athlete is that you can only do three things, go to practice, go to school, and study. This eliminates the opportunity for these students to have a job therefore they have no income throughout college. “One alternative is to simply pay the athletes; in addition to their scholarships make them employees of the university.” This topic of paying athletes is a highly disputed topic that makes sense very often. These athletes are working a job much harder than anyone else and are getting no revenue from it. In fact the NCAA puts very strict rules on this prohibiting any forms of possible income from being an athlete. Also these athletes are in a worse place job wise after their college ends.Because of their sports that means they have minimal time to do well in school and to have internships. “Others find the low graduation rates among the top athletes, and questionable curriculum and standards, an affront to universities' central educational mission.” These top athletes are at a much lower chance of graduation than any others because they have to manage their time much more. Because of this they either do not graduate or are forced to take very easy classes that will not help them in the future. For this reason i do support the idea that these athletes need some form of compensation for their sacrifices they are making in order to play for their team.
Future research: Should college athletes be paid? How much?
