Should college athletes be paid?

As I was driving in to work this morning I heard this interesting editorial on whether or not college athletes - particularly the football and basketball variety - should be paid. The basic argument is that they are employees of the college or university that they attend - in that they are earning money for the institution - so fair employment practices should be enforced for them. The idea that a college scholarship is 'payment' is poo-pooed and instead it becomes a race issue with all the poor black kids being forced into laboring for the rich white administrators.

I disagree with this editorial on many levels. First this is in no way a slavery or 'kept woman' situation. In our society education is the highest ideal. If you have a good education then you are thought well of - even if you're a complete idiot (e.g. Bill Clinton). But if you don't have a good education then you're not well thought of - even if you're quite successful. In the situation of college athletes, it's a trade off. They get the invaluable education that our society values for performing on the field - something else our society values. I love the NCAA commercials that point out how many thousands of college athlete there are and that the vast majority of them are going pro in something other than sports. That's what college is about after all - training for a profession. As for the ones that do go pro in a sport, they are in training as well. The college level is where they go to the next level in order to be ready for the pro level in their sport. It's necessary for most pro athletes to have this time of preparation before they go pro in their sport. So, the idea that this is some form of slavery is pretty much bunk. The time these athletes spend training and playing in college prepares them for the earning potential they get when they do go pro. It's a pretty fair trade off, if you ask me.

Secondly, have you seen how much college costs these days? It cost me over $80,000 just for my undergrad degree and I graduated 8 years ago - I can guarantee you that the cost hasn't gone down. The best of these athletes are given full scholarships to the institutions they are playing for, which when added up over 4 (and sometimes 5) years usually totals over $100,000. If at 18 I was told that my talent on the field was worth over $100,000 and that in going to that place where my skills were worth that much money I would gain the skills to be worth significantly more than that - I can pretty much guarantee that I would have jumped at that prospect. A scholarship is payment, whether you like it or not. Can you spend that payment at the mall? No, but you can spend the payment you get for the skills earned as a result of that scholarship.

Most schools push the idea of being scholar-athletes to their athletes. By not paying the athletes this idea is furthered. If we start to pay our college athletes then they will simply become athletes without the scholar. In the realm of college, where learning to be a scholar is the first and foremost priority, hiring athletes would not be a positive move.