Athlete Privileges

Shawn Roberts

Collegiate athletics are a large part of the college experience. Most schools have some kind of athletic program in which students become involved in or get recruited for. These athletes, in many cases, are put on an athletic scholarship to help pay for their education, but are they too pampered? Almost every school has athlete perks that they use to persuade athletes to attend their institution. Many people believe it is unfair to allow athletes to have this kind of special treatment while others disagree. The former argues that they’re students just like everyone else and that being an athlete is an extracurricular activity that should not set them apart. Those for the special treatment conversely say that they should because they bring in large amounts of money to the school and are a major way of advertising a schools prestige.

One of the issues brought up in this argument is that student athletes receive early registration for classes and that this is unfair for all other students. In his article on college athlete privileges Jimmy Young states that this is not the case. College athletes are often unable to take certain classes because of the schedule conflict that their athletic obligations present. In actuality a study showed that even given the early registration, only 81% of athletes had a full schedule at the end of early registration as opposed to the 84% of students who had full schedules after the first day of registration. For now there are only a few rules to limit the extent of which athletes can be aided which are set in place by the NCAA, and as it looks it may not change for quite some time.