My research paper will focus on student athletes and academics.
Online there are sources that say they perform well and some that say they do
not. I found articles and case studies about student athletes and how well they
perform academically in college. It seems that most sources think student
athletes in college struggle academically. This was not my original idea with
athletes, but after researching, I like where things are going. The links below
are useful because they provide feedback from studies done on my topic. There
is a small debate with my topic which I will be researching more to see for
myself.
I think athletes and academics is a great topic.
ReplyDeleteBecause so many students this semester are writing about sports, I watched some of the HBO documentary "Student Athlete" -- which is very worth checking out, by the way. Though a big part of the documentary is about the insanity of not paying these athletes -- especially because so many come from impoverished backgrounds (while their coaches and schools are raking in the bucks) -- it does bring home how hard these kids have to work, and just how little time they have to focus on being "Students" because they are "Athletes." And there is so much pressure on these kids -- especially competitive pressures that make them push themselves beyond their limits to battle for those very few professional slots.
The fact that so few will ever play professionally really gets you thinking about how important it is that they actually get a college education out of the deal. Two relatively recent books on that topic:
1) The Miseducation of the Student Athlete: How to Fix College Sports by Kenneth L. Shropshire (Wharton 2017)
It is not available at the RU libraries, but you can have them order it.
2) Cheated : The UNC Scandal, the Education of Athletes, and the Future of Big-Time College Sports by Jay M. Smith and Mary Willingham, which the library has available online:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1975019
Though it is about the cheating scandal at North Carolina, it delves deeply into the whole question of whether or not student athletes are getting a real education at some schools.
For a local perspective, you might look at the chapter on athletics in Paul GE Clemens's Rutgers since 1945: A History of the State University of New Jersey, which discusses the way presidents Bloustein and McCormick had to focus on athletic / academic issues as Rutgers became more competitive. And my own view is that they did such a good job of making sure Rutgers athletes get a decent education, that they basically made it harder to recruit the top athletes, who sometimes are short-sightedly happy to go along with any scheme where they don't really have to study so hard....