Isn’t A College Education Good Enough?
By Erie's Scribe on Dec 13, 2007 with Comments 0
This is plenty reward for your efforts, no?
I say that a college education is plenty of compensation and then some. College costs a lot. I haven’t been there for awhile and I’m not sending any kids there anytime soon so I don’t know the actual figures, but I think it’s safe to say it’s a $150,000 investment at least these days. If this is true, than an athlete with a full ride is getting compensated to the tune of $37,500 per year. Not too shabby. And let’s not get into alumni booster kick-backs that may or may not be commonplace.
Isn’t it all about giving people opportunities? Doesn’t a college degree represent one of the best opportunities you can give an individual? Sure college football and hoops are minor leagues for the NFL and NBA, but let’s say that doesn’t pan out, isn’t it nice to have that degree to fall back on? Am I the only one who thinks that the college degree an athlete can earn is worth far more to his or her future than the face value of the tuition? If you pay the athletes, doesn’t it make a statement devaluing the worth of a college education?
Not to mention, there’s already a great divide on campus between Average Joe students and the athletes who’ve reached hero status. Paying the athletes would only widen this divide. And who wouldn’t develop an extra sense of entitlement if you were being paid to be there? Does any 18-21 year old need more of a sense of entitlement? By the way, would the athletes make more than the professors? I don’t think that will go over well.
Maybe this is just a subject that comes up during slow weeks on the sports media landscape, but it always fires me up. Personally, I think the last thing we need is to devalue our higher education system, and that’s exactly what paying college athletes would do.
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