Academia should stop spoiling athletes

When I was in high school, I sat next to a football player in my math class. He would often ask me for help on the problems. He didn’t struggle with the new concepts we were learning in the class. Instead, he usually needed help with the basic concepts he should have known to get into the class in the first place, such as adding fractions. But after a while, he stopped worrying about it — the teacher gave him good grades on all his assignments regardless of his performance.

My experience is nothing but anecdotal evidence. One cannot infer that all football players are uneducated or that teachers always pull strings for them based on their athletic status. However, a CNN study has found that between seven and 18 percent of college athletes playing revenue-sports read on an elementary school level. Even more common, athletes score lower on their standardized tests than the national average or lower than elementary reading level.

I don’t believe athletes are stupid. I think this is a flaw in our culture. From early in high school or even before, athletes are expected to devote all of their time to sports if they want to be serious about it. And yes, there’s a purpose to that — anyone who wants to be good at something needs to practice. But there are other time-consuming extracurricular activities that do not have the same issues associated with them, such as music and student leadership.

The problem is not only that athletes are expected to dedicate all of their time to sports but that they also internalize that sports are the only thing that matter. Schools are often willing to go easier on their athletes than other students. And since some athletes will get better grades than they deserve, those same athletes will not work as hard and thus will not learn as much as their peers.

The good high school athletes will get athletic scholarships to play in college, and often colleges will lower their admission standards to let good athletes in. Some athletes in the study were found to have had single-digit ACT scores. That would make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for a non-athlete to get into even the least selective colleges. But universities get a lot of revenue from athletics, so they will lower their standards to cash in.

When the athletes get into college, they struggle in classes. Some schools even have artificially easy classes designed specifically for athletes. But still, many of them have a difficult time keeping up. If athletes were held to the same academic standards as other students from the beginning, colleges would have no need to lower standards for athletes. The only way to encourage the system to change is for colleges to hold athletes to the same admissions criteria as everyone else. Eventually, things will change. Athletes will stop taking education for granted. The current system, where we keep athletes undereducated so they can bring in revenue, is unfair to the athletes and the other students who take classes with them.

e.zachary@chronicle.utah.edu