Should College Athletes be paid?

College Students Should be Paid for Playing Sports While Attending School

Cheanel Nolden

Instructor: Jewell Winn

January 29,2018

Introduction

In the recent years, there has been a major controversial issue in the NCAA on whether the college students should be paid or not for participating or playing sports. Indeed, there exist varying viewpoint and perceptions from different people or institutions on whether the students should be paid for not. Most of the people have the notion that the students are already awarded substantially with the reimbursed education expenses, but even though they get the tuition and college fees catered for, many of the college students have challenges in paying for their costs. It is paramount that the students should be rewarded for their enthusiasm, challenging work, commitment, time lost during the sports in spite of what many people may believe in. Johnson and Acquaviva (2012) assert that college graduates can, in fact, make much more money over a lifetime in comparison with non-graduates. Still, they question the idea that full athletic scholarships offer full education. This is because it does not cater for all the costs related to graduation. In most situations, universities fail to live up to its end of the bargain of offering education, as evidenced by the dismal number of graduation rates. Even though the college education fee may escalate and its accessibility to the students diminishes as the loans for students skyrocket then it is paramount to reward the students who participate in such initiatives.

Purpose of your research

The purpose of this research is to investigate the potential implications or the consequences of paying the college students who participate in sports. It will also entail determining the perception of the students towards getting paid for participating in any sports initiative and possible outcomes in the society.

Problem statement

While the NCAA is mainly concerned with promoting the amateurism in the college athletes, there seems an overwhelming need to pay the college students stipends and allowances to ensure their mandate is realizable.

Literature Review

In accordance to Mitchell and Edelman (2013), the authors assert that college students should be paid for participating in the sports. The authors address that NCAA is defending its no-pay policy on various dubious grounds. For instance, it asserts that compensating student-athletes is most likely to destroy competitive balance in college sports. The concept of amateurism among the college students should be re-evaluated to eradicated obsoleteness in light of reformed circumstances, for instance, the quantity of money that is generated by sports in the colleges and universities and the level of commitment by students in anticipation of succeeding. The writers agree that most student-athletes are amateurs who decide to take part in intercollegiate sports as part of their educational experiences. Hence there is need to maintain the distinction between student-athletes and professional athletes.

This is echoed by what Johnson and Acquaviva (2012) suggest in their analysis of the consequences or potential implication of paying the college students who participate in sports on the coaches, athletes and the college administrators. The authors affirm that the current trend in the United States and other developed states of not rewarding or paying the students, yet they are operating in a professional atmosphere. The impending problem is that NCAA is still endorsing an amateurish strategy in college athletes that are based on competing or contradictory values. The authors hypothesize that lack of payment programs have resulted in college students questioning the status quo of the current systems through their words and actions.

According to Maloney (2013), since the establishment of NCAA, the issue of academic corruption in intercollegiate athletics has been of significant concern and empirical inquiry. Numerous problems face the education sector today such as denial of payment of players, and the exploitation of student-athletes in academics which are resulting from the visions and mission of the NCAA. This poses a significant challenge as the institution should follow the precepts and regulations given by the board. The author illustrates the negative issues that are affecting the college sports which are currently taking the form of academic fraud, cheating in the recruitment of athletes, and false sense of entitlements. Colleges also suffer from illegal inducements form schools and boosters.

On the contrary Bucy (2013) express the cost benefits of paying the college students who participate in sports initiative. Even though the college fees and tuition may escalate, and the institution should pay the students to be able to cater for their expenses and other personal effects, it brings discrimination and disadvantage to the minority and the low-income earners. The students who fail to participate in sports feels alienated as many benefits and rewards are primarily extended to the middle class, whites and affluent Americans. Many of the college students also get more privileges than other students this may cause discrimination among the players and other students who are not participating in the sports.

Gap(s) in the literature.

From the above literature review, there are a few noticeable gaps and disparities that the authors were unable to respond to adequately. In their article Point/Counterpoint: Paying College Athletes, Johnson and Acquaviva (2012) only addressed the advantages accrued from paying the students to play as well as the demerits that occur if not paid. By so doing they were only successful in bringing out these two antagonizing implications but failed to become out precisely whether it was prudent to pay the students to participate in the college athletes. The researchers identified their research problem that the other developed economies were affording their athletes some payment and had embraced the sports as a purely professional and capitalist undertaking, unlike the United States. By such kind of assertion, the problem of whether it was beneficial to pay the athletes was not honestly introspected since the research was based on the comparative basis and therefore lacked objectivity.

Bucy (2013) who undertakes the analysis on the cost-benefit of paying the students who participate in the athletes hypothesizes that only the racial minorizes as well as the low-income families who suffer disparate effects of the play-to-pay programs and therefore fails to view the subject in the totality of its effectiveness.

Research question or hypotheses of your topic.

Does paying the colleges students who participate in sports cause impartiality or discrimination of student in institutions and are these challenges reconcilable? The proposal is that the paying of college students is far much better as opposed to failing to pay them.

Proposed theory for your research.

This research proposes that the students should be paid to participate in athletes. First why the students need to be paid is that these students will be equipped with necessary skills in financial literacy. Because the athletes are one of the best paying sport in the world the students require a hand on skills in handling the finances on their own and these will make them responsible even after the school.

It should be noted that the United States former president, Roosevelt, founded the NCAA have developed and revolution from the mere idea of amateurism and had a lot of cash at its disposal. It has also ben loathed that the paying of the students to play has the effect of harboring fertile ground where the corruption and embezzlement of the funds. While this could be one of the probable impacts, it fails to be objective on the need that the students may have. The institutions like the NCAA need to come with ways and means of curbing these vices without disqualifying the need for students not to obtain the payment.

Besides, given the amount of the time that the college student spends which can be estimated to be over 40 hours in a week which is almost equal to the amount of time the full-time player uses. This is the time that one takes to attending training sessions, travel, games as well as other sessions that are necessitated for one to remain at the time. Therefore, it becomes paramount that a college athlete needs some stipend and allowances so that they can keep up with the athlete's tight schedules.

References

Bucy, M. (2013). The Costs of the Pay-to-Play Model in High School Athletics. U. Md. LJ Race,

Religion, Gender & Class, 13, 278.

Griffin, G. (2008). Should college athletes be paid? Detroit: Greenhaven Press.

Johnson, D. A., & Acquaviva, J. (2012). Point/counterpoint: Paying college athletes. The Sport

Journal, 15(1).