Recently on the social media app Twitter there was a post I came across of a girl complaining how there are students whom bust their tails to get a 3.0-4.0 GPA and have no money given to them but an athlete with a 1.8 GPA can be on a full-ride (a scholarship that pays for all the person’s expenses). I'd like to knock out any ideas of bias in this piece, as a college baseball player myself. In the NCAA Division III level of athletics there are no athletic scholarships given. All money is earned through academics or basic need like all non-athletes.
First things first, to stay eligible for the scholarship an athlete receives, they must maintain at least a 2.3 GPA. That means balancing classes, workouts, practice, probably another workout, mandatory study hall (used to hopefully get homework done), and then the other necessities to live like eating and sleeping for example. Also usually, at least at my university, if someone is holding a 3.0 GPA usually that student is on some sort of scholarship or grant because of what they did in high school academically. To say these athletes haven’t earned their scholarship is ridiculous. How can you honestly say a division I or II athlete has his school handed to him? These athletes basically rid themselves of any social life to be able to continue to play the sport they love and put money in the school and NCAA’s pockets.
On average, just 2 percent of high school student athletes will receive athletic scholarships in order to compete in college (ncaa.org, 2016). While two-thirds of college graduates receive some sort of aid that does not need to be paid back (collegeraptor.com, 2014). So if someone in school is complaining about not receiving money while these athletes are, ask what you’re doing to be stuck in that one-third that isn’t receiving any monetary aid without debt piling up. These athletes will also bring in thousands and for the major schools, millions. Texas A&M University had expenses of one hundred and nine millions dollars and a revenue of one hundred and ninety-three million dollars, both rounded to the nearest million (USAtoday.com, 2015). That’s a profit of roughly eighty-four million dollars for the school. Student athletes made a single university, while it being a very large and notable one, eighty-four million dollars, and people still say they haven’t earned their scholarships.
There are athletes out there whom fall behind and do lose the GPA, who then become kind of a struggling student on scholarship, and there are students who have bad luck or circumstance and get stuck with no reward for their work. But at the same time, there are plenty of athletes who work just as hard off the field as they do on it, and still won't be as well off academically than students who have the time to study and take tests in a classroom instead of a bus or hotel room.
After all of this, the annual graduation success rate of all division athletes that entered college in 2008 is at 86% (there are adjustments made in a long equation to get this) while the rate for non-athletes is at 65% (statistics from NCAA.org graduation rates, 2015). So I don’t know what world some of these kids live in to not think athletes earn these scholarships, but hopefully this helps prove they do.
Citations:
Berkowitz, Steve. NCAA Finacnes. Retrieved July 29, 2016 from http://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/
National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA. (n.d.). Graduation Success Rate. Retrieved July 29, 2016, from http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/gradu...
National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA. (n.d.). NCAA Recruiting Facts. Retrieved July 29, 2016, from https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/Recruitin... Fact Sheet WEB.pdf
