https://www.chronicle.com/arti...d5yRAEvWNSXlsQHwR-Dg

(Mary Anna, the University of Oklahoma figures prominently, with data.)

Exactly. And you also have a gajillion dollars being filtered into club sports, coaches, and sports scholarship advocates, all running after just a tiny handful of those scholarships and all being told that scholarships are just out there for the picking.

In my daughter's cohort, there were only 4 players I knew who got "full ride" athletic scholarships (all in volleyball). But several of them earned and received academic scholarships, which the university will happily give out since it keeps their athletic scholarship dollars untouched. I wouldn't be shocked if most of the academic all-stars are on academic, not athletic, scholarships.

Interesting.

I thought the take was going to be ‘by the time they go to college you’ve spent more than the cost of a college education on their sport’.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
Interesting.

I thought the take was going to be ‘by the time they go to college you’ve spent more than the cost of a college education on their sport’.

I was wondering that, too.

It's probably true for some sports. Skiing, hockey. Especially if you take into account the relatively low scholarship amounts in non-revenue sports.

They did make the point that the parents had spent a good portion of the cost of attending college on the sports training.

This article makes me sad. I thought that more kids in the less high profile sports earned their educations that way. These small partial scholarships seem like a smokescreen, because many universities give those out liberally to help recruit students. These kids' families really might have been better off to save their sports training dollars and accept partial merit scholarships.

That's not even considering the possibility that they would have had better academic credentials if they hadn't been spending so much time on athletic training. Nor the possible lifetime issues from wear and tear on their bodies. Nor the adolescent experiences they missed while at practice.

But most of those things are hypotheticals. The fact that fewer people get athletic scholarships than most people imagine is sad to me.

What the article does not mention is how demanding it is to be a division one athlete at a desirable university.

I know several families whose children attended college with athletic scholarships. The kids soon find out that the hard work that made them a star in high school is not enough in college, and working out non-stop to warm the bench is a drag.

Plus, they miss out on the college experience because they are always working out Or traveling. The boot camp program I attend is run by a woman who played soccer in college. She told me she dropped off the team in her senior year because she got tired of not playing and not having any college fun.

Plus, their grades suffer from the inability to study.

Plus, the college that your child ultimately gets into on an athletic scholarship may not be a good fit for your child’s personality or academic needs.

So if a college costs $120,000 and an athletic scholarship saves $40,000, and you spent more than $40,000 to train your child in the sport, does it make sense?

My experience was a while ago (decades), and my college did not give athletic scholarships. However, I hung out mostly with athletes ... baseball players, gymnasts, lacrosse players, the occasional football player. They did not seem to have to work out non-stop, and they did not miss out on the college experience. I can speak with great confidence about both the gymnasts and the baseball team, because I traveled with both of them for years. In those years, before professional staff became de rigeur, I also ran the weight room for the football players in the early mornings in the off season.

But, as I said, that was a while ago, and that was at a place where athletics were important, but not the top priority.

A lot of this depends on how good the kid actually is.

Steve is right. As with most things, being at the top is awesome.

Unfortunately, I missed Ed Marinaro by a few months.

The lacrosse players I hung out with, though, were some of the best in the world. (Because the lacrosse world just isn’t that big.).

I tutored women’s basketball players with scholarships at Purdue in the 80s.

I don’t remember the details of the scholarship, but besides tuition it paid me. So I assume it was pretty comprehensive. I never asked if it paid for housing. I’m pretty sure they had a cafeteria that was free.

I'm not a fan (pun intended) of articles like this. I find it poorly argued, though well written. It's a bunch of emotion-tugging stories that the author skillfully employs to create a certain feel in the audience. And the generalizations follow.

Let's start with ...

STRAW MAN ALERT:

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Many colleges award millions of dollars in athletic aid, touting individual scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the vast majority of athletes get nowhere near that much. For families expecting a return on their investment in their children’s sports, they are in for a surprise.

Yes, and just how many families are actually expecting "a return on their investment." Build up an expectation and smack that straw man down.

To continue...

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In all but six sports — football, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics, women’s tennis, and women’s volleyball — Division I colleges are more limited in how they hand out money. In more than a dozen other sports — including baseball, lacrosse, and soccer — the scholarships don’t come close to covering the full cost of every athlete’s education.

This stuff is well known to everyone (with a brain) who has a kid interested in playing at the college level. The fact that full scholarships (go to college freeeeee!!!) are very rare doesn't come as some "oh my gosh" surprise to families who have any foresight, which is most of 'em I imagine. But have you seen any real evidence in this little morality play?
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FINALLY, some recognition of agency for the kid and the family!

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Nonetheless, Ms. Ellerbee says, the investment has already paid off. Swimming has taught her kids the value of hard work, setting goals, and dealing with adversity. Even if her children don’t swim in college, it’s a sport they can enjoy their whole lives.

And then it's back to sob stories about poor kids who don't find their pot of gold in wrestling.

It's well known that small scholarships often move the needle on yield (the likelihood that a prospective student says yes). This is true of college admissions, not just athletics. There is nothing special here about athletic recruiting.

When I finished the article, I congratulated the writer for creating an image of a bad system that systematically abuses people ... without offering anything beyond a couple of stories. For the most part, the parents and families have little agency here. They're prisoners of their own short-sightedness. Mere cogs to be manipulated by unscrupulous coaches who regard recruits as fodder.

I'm no fan of the current college athletics system, but I also don't like having my emotions manipulated by anecdote-driven pre-cooked narratives.

What's the graduation rate of college athletes compared to the non-athlete population? Even if you restrict this to "revenue sports?"

Poor Allison winds up at UCLA paying 40K. Did she and her family get "taken?" What's the counterfactual?

There is a built in assumption to your criticism, PD.

quote:

quote:

In all but six sports — football, men’s and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics, women’s tennis, and women’s volleyball — Division I colleges are more limited in how they hand out money. In more than a dozen other sports — including baseball, lacrosse, and soccer — the scholarships don’t come close to covering the full cost of every athlete’s education.

This stuff is well known to everyone (with a brain) who has a kid interested in playing at the college level. The fact that full scholarships (go to college freeeeee!!!) are very rare doesn't come as some "oh my gosh" surprise to families who have any foresight, which is most of 'em I imagine.

So I will ask, as you asked of the author of the article: do you have any evidence that this is true?

Your argument appears to be, it's obvious to anyone with a brain. So most people don't believe that.

In response, I'd say that:

-- one-third of Americans believe in UFOs.

-- 34% of Americans don't believe in evolution, not even in evolution guided by a supreme being.

-- half of all American adults think Hitler came to power in a coup

-- a quarter of Americans believe the sun rotates around the Earth

I won't even go to, how many believe in climate change, how many believed (and still believe!) Donald Trump's lies, how many believe that vaccines cause autism, etc.

Are you sure you want to stick with the "anyone with a brain" argument?

P*D makes good points. I should have made it more clear that in my opinion some of the worst offenders in terms of selling the myth of college scholarships are primary and high school sports clubs. They have a clear conflict of interest, since they make their money by signing as many kids to their club as possible, and at the elite levels are all about how many of their kids have signed with colleges to play.

My kid could have played in college, but not with a scholarship. OTOH, she did get an informal offer to a very good (academically) school, that would have come with admission and an academic scholarship. I was bummed that she turned it down, only because it was a good school. But she wanted the full college experience. She ended up playing on the club team ($$) for 1-2 years, but didn't enjoy it nearly as much as her intramurals teams with friends. I don't think her experience is that unusual. We also know of one girl who was so burned out after playing full-time on club teams for 6 years that she dropped out of the sport entirely. Her last high school game was her last game, period.