Essay Why College Athletes Should Be Paid

Another reason that college athletes should not receive money for their athletic performance is that it would provide an unwarranted transition with a focus on athletics over education. Even though most students that participate in Division I athletics already pursue an education and a respectable career, there are trends that support that paying college athletes would result in some negative progress in academics. Tracey DiLascio, a well-respected journalist who contributes insightful analysis to college football at the national level, mentions specific trends that have already occurred with increasing pressure to pay college athletes: High school graduation rates in the past 10 years have gone down from 79% to 68%, college admittance rate

Carnoch also writes about the example of poor money management for athletes and how it negatively affects these once amazing athletes: “Up to 21% of professional athletes that used to have a career in collegiate and professional sports are now working ordinary and common jobs that even potentially pay minimum wage salaries” (Carnoch). These athletes earned millions of dollars, but by the time that they are about 45 years out, some of them run out of money because they do not spend their money properly and use it to buy luxurious items that they do not actually need. Clearly, with the emergence of the possibility of college athletes being paid, our modern society today results in more people specializing in sports over education, even though education is far more valuable to people because knowledge and information are power. DiLascio states even more statistics that indicate the already shift of athletics over academics: “In the past twenty years, the percentage of ineligible athletes do to academic concerns has risen from three percent to eleven percent, and most of these ineligible athletes do not succeed at the collegiate level which crushes their dream of playing in the NBA”