In January, two former University of North Carolina athletes filed a class-action lawsuit against the school and the NCAA. According to the complaint, the university and the NCAA had failed to “safeguard and provide a meaningful education to scholarship athletes who agreed to attend UNC—and take the field—in exchange for academically sound instruction.” These allegations are a direct result of recent revelations of academic fraud related to athletes at the university. Namely, an 18-year long scheme steered struggling athletes towards sham classes in order to preserve their athletic eligibility — classes whose only requirement was a single paper that would often be given a passing grade without having been read. The mastermind behind the host of fake classes was Deborah Crowder, a manager in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, who wanted an opportunity to help struggling students, largely including student-athletes, who often came to college unprepared for academic work. In the wake of the UNC investigation, attention has focused on the misconduct of administrators and the tarnished reputation of a prestigious public university. But the lawsuit highlights another important dimension: a university’s failure to live up to its promise to college athletes. It is the responsibility of a university to educate all its students, and when that is hindered through academic fraud aimed at preserving athletic programs, student-athletes are the ones who pay the ultimate price, as they leave college woefully unprepared for their futures.
For many athletes and their parents, a college scholarship is the rare and precious payoff for years of preparation and financial investment. It’s a dream reflected in popular culture time and again: In the 2000 film Remember the Titans, the prospect of winning college scholarships is the ultimate motivation for many of the players and coaches. In the 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams — a particularly prominent example of the archetype of sports as a route to higher education and, by extension, out of poverty — two Chicago high school athletes use their basketball skills to create a better life for themselves. These all-too-common narratives, with scholarship-studded happy endings, are, however, unrealistic for the vast majority of American students. Only 2 percent of high school athletes win scholarships at NCAA institutions, and the average award is only $11,000. Just six college sports exclusively offer full-ride scholarships; for the other sports the coaches can divvy up the limited amount of money as they choose. While many high school athletes may dream of winning an athletic scholarship, for most it remains a far-fetched fantasy.
In addition to the unlikelihood of athletic scholarships opening up the path to higher education for students, for those who do win such scholarships the situation is often far from ideal. The NCAA requires athletes, both current students and recruits, to meet high academic standards, ostensibly to ensure that athletes receive a legitimate education. The NCAA has long held this policy as a way of ensuring that student-athletes live up to the former half of their title, but the strict penalties for non-compliance encourage colleges to circumvent the regulations rather than attempt to satisfy them.
At stake are the enormous profits associated with college sports, and it’s often easier to cut corners than risk jeopardizing revenue streams. In this way, scandals like the one at UNC point to the incompatibility of intense college athletic programs and the high academic standards the NCAA sets for college athletes. The priority placed on college athletics and the profits it generates makes many colleges appear “as fronts for expensive and otherwise unaffordable sports teams… [that] operate in belligerent defiance… of the school’s education process,” as noted by the NY Post.
Considerable attention has been directed towards scandals such as the one at UNC, but often lost in the noise are the student-athletes themselves, who, despite common sentiment to the contrary, are the victims of the system. The whole concept of a “student-athlete” itself is becoming a paradox. Division I football players, for example, devote as many as 60 hours a week to practice — more than a full-time job — leaving little time for studying. And yet, athletes reap none of the financial benefits of their work: they receive no salary while the NCAA rakes in billions in revenue. Opponents of paying college athletes argue that the reward for being a student-athlete is a degree, but the fact of the matter is that these students aren’t receiving the education they’re promised. A CNN investigation using data from 21 universities across the country found that many athletes could only read up to an eighth grade level; between 7 percent and 18 percent of revenue-sport athletes at most schools have only an elementary school reading level. Graduation rates for Division I basketball players hover around 50 percent, but not because some leave school early to play in the NBA or the WNBA. In fact, only 1 percent of college athletes eventually play professionally. Student-athletes may have made it to college, but they often leave no more prepared for the real world than when they first set foot on campus.
Even when their college careers aren’t marked by fake classes and academic fraud, former student-athletes still struggle with life after sports. After spending all of their time on the field, many are unable to compete for jobs with their classmates who had more time for career-focused extracurricular and internship opportunities. Furthermore, most colleges offer few, if any, services to help ease the psychological burdens — long hours, fatigue and constant competition — that come with being a college athlete. These problems are shared by all student-athletes, not just those in revenue sports, demonstrating yet again that college athletics programs are not fulfilling their promise of a well-rounded education.
The growth of the college sports industry has led to the exploitation of athletes by their colleges. But there have been inklings that this dynamic may soon change. In a lawsuit led by its star quarterback, the football team at Northwestern University recently won the right to unionize. Although the decision has been stayed pending an appeal by the university, the ruling recognizes that student athletes are essentially employees and, as such, are owed more substantial financial benefits than they receive. Depending on the appeals ruling, this case could be a huge push in the movement to pay college athletes. And pay for students isn’t the only reform proposal: Others have turned to more unusual ideas, such as allowing athletes to build an academic program around their sport, allowing them to be football or basketball majors. Nevertheless, these proposals share the understanding that student-athletes are getting a raw bargain.
With many athletes unprepared for life after athletics and often only equipped with a subpar education, it’s no wonder that there has been backlash against the NCAA and the college sports industry. This is not to say that college athletics are a bad thing — participation in athletics can be a positive experience. However, it is important to recognize that for some, especially revenue-sport athletes, college athletics programs edge dangerously close to being exploitative, leaving their graduates unprepared for the workforce. The recent athletics scandals and the experience of many student athletes demonstrate that many institutions have lost sight of their primary goal: education. College athletics has real victims, and they are the student athletes themselves.
Art by Emily Reif.
This article is part of BPR’s special feature on higher education. Please click here to return to the rest of the feature.