College Athletes
It’s common among people in my basic social-cultural-economic situation to decry the fact that college athletes get a free-ride to fame, adulation and admissions when, generally, they do pretty poorly in school. Especially at a school like Northwestern, which is a legitimate first and half tier institution, but is also in the Big Ten, these feelings run pretty rampant. Nick Gillespie notes some research showing that, in fact, athletes don’t generally meet the academic standards of their institutions and compares it to truely pernicious forms of standards-adjustment, like legacy admissions.
Although the SAT spreads between athletes and everyone else – especially at schools like Georgia Tech and Cal – are really high, it’s hard to see what the real problem is. Because of the weird way sports is set up in America, we have large research universities replacing a minor league system in football and basketball, and have also decided that those same schools are the best way to train Olympic athletes in sports which don’t have lucrative professional leagues. There are upsides and downsides to this system, but it’s basically just the way it is. I also haven’t seen great evidence that having athletes at a school, even if they perform below average academically, creates real drag for the students at school for academic and educational reasons.
As to the more abstract concerns about fairness and merit, I don’t think that athletes have less of a claim to the resources of a college, or to rewards for their athletic excellence, than do students. From what I can tell, what it takes to be an academically excellent student and and excellent athlete are pretty much the same. At the core, there’s natural talent, but mostly its a lot of hard work and practice. Now, there are questions to what provides more value to society, or the university as a whole, but in a world where we think sports and athletic achievement are important, rewarding it doesn’t strike me as whole that bad.
