Earlier this month, reading specialist and University of North Carolina (UNC) faculty member Mary Willingham found through her research that over half of the school’s athletes are illiterate, causing an uproar on campus. The research school and home of the Tar Heels promptly responded, denying her findings and placing an abrupt halt on her research.
The issue of fudging student-athletes’ grades in order to keep these profitable players in the game remains a concern of the general public. But the only winner in this game is the University. The athlete, cheated out of an entitled education, always loses.
Whether Willingham’s findings are true or not, the priority to have a student-athlete maintain a certain GPA at any cost seems quite plausible given the lucrativeness of university sports programs.
For renowned universities like UNC, sports programs are the cash cows of the farm. These prized beauties are milked for staggering amounts like the $16.9 million profit of UNC’s men’s basketball team in 2012, the second largest sports program profit of that year, according to CNN Money.
So when Willingham claimed that 60 percent of the 183 football or basketball players she interviewed read at fourth- to eighth-grade levels while roughly 10 percent read below a third-grade level, UNC’s rather defensive response, while controversial to some, seemed warranted. There is much at stake in the exposure of such findings and especially in the confirmation of them. What’s at stake in the burial of such findings (if true) is even more colossal.
While the question of whether a university education is a necessary catalyst of a fruitful livelihood remains a conversational centerpiece – especially with notable examples like college dropouts Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs – the lack of such education could do damage to the student. The key word here is education, not degree. Anyone can get a degree, but, as we see in Willingham’s findings, not everyone receives an education.
Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs provide a very marginal example that includes other substantial factors in their success. For the rest of us who aren’t taking this non-traditional route, a university education is valuable. It’s only here, at the university, that we will discover the keys necessary to unlock those heavily guarded entries into industries such as the corporate world.
This issue would be easier to manage if it was exclusive to universities, but the truth is that it isn’t. If these student-athletes are entering the university with such grand rates of illiteracy, the issue is one of our entire educational system, from elementary and on, thus making the issue more of a burden on the university, not a product of it.
So, what responsibility does the University have when faced with this? And should any actions taken have any bearing on the progress of the student-athlete in their respective sports program?
This problem becomes our responsibility when we decide to profit off of these student-athletes. Swapping out a student’s education – one they are entitled to – for a “lucrative” future that may or may not come into fruition is simply wrong. And while the student-athlete may not acknowledge this robbery due to the distraction of a promising future, as investors, the university should see to the care of its “share.”
This care should not just be attentiveness to the athlete’s physical health, but the athlete’s educational health as well. For every hour spent doing suicides in the gym, a struggling athlete should be encouraged to spend an hour with a tutor. To deny them of this opportunity is to value what the student athlete can do more than who they are.
The results of such attentiveness to the educational health of athletes can prove very fruitful. Many athletes have used the education gained in higher institutions of learning to find success beyond the courts and fields.
Again, Willingham’s findings may or may not be true but provoke a question: Do we value what our athletes can do more than who they are? We must remember that student athletes are students first and the rightful heirs to an unabridged education.
