Academic Integrity in Intercollegiate Athletics: Principles, Rules, and Best Practices
2. Scholarships
The basis for the award of an athletics scholarship is generally excellence in athletics, but the purpose of the award is to provide access to higher education. From the school’s standpoint, retention of any scholarship should be determined on the basis of academic criteria. The expectation should always be that a student receiving a scholarship will graduate.
Currently athletic scholarships at many Division IA schools are awarded on a one-year renewable basis, and an athlete’s commitment to participation and success in athletics may determine scholarship renewal. Athletes may be placed in a position where continued academic opportunity requires prioritizing athletics participation and success over academics, in a manner inconsistent with the positive values of intercollegiate athletics. The Coalition recommends the following policies, to be implemented through NCAA bylaws:
2.1 Athletics scholarships shall be awarded on a year-by-year basis with the presumption that they will be renewed up to four times for a total award of five years, or until graduation, whichever comes first, for students who are in good academic standing, conform to campus codes for student behavior, conform to the athletics department’s standards of conduct, and adhere to team rules. If a student graduates in fewer than five years an institution may renew the scholarship if the student has athletic eligibility remaining. Institutions shall establish criteria and a mechanism for revoking a scholarship. The final authority for revoking a scholarship shall rest with the chief academic officer. A student awarded an athletics scholarship who is no longer participating in athletics will be counted against the NCAA maximum number of awards for that sport, unless the scholarship is revoked.
Until this policy is adopted as an NCAA bylaw, the Coalition recommends it as a best practice, to be considered and adopted by local campus Faculty Governance Bodies.
The Coalition believes that the number of athletics scholarships should be reduced, and will address this issue in future discussions concerning cost containment in college sports.
Need-based scholarships
Ultimately, the rationale for athletics scholarships is fundamentally weak. A scholarship award based solely on athletic ability and commitment to participate in varsity sports resembles in important respects payment for services, and such scholarships further encourage high-school athletes who are college aspirants to prioritize sports over academics. Moreover, on some campuses scholarships for athletes who have no financial need are partially supported, through tuition and fee payments, by other students who may have various levels of financial need, an outcome that is extremely difficult to justify. While the Coalition regards ending scholarships based on athletics skills as an ideal that fully reformed intercollegiate athletics would entail, it recognizes that it would be difficult to design a need-only basis that would not lead to negative consequences, including, among others, the following: opportunities for fraud in the awarding of aid, which the current system does not entail; severely unequal impact on high- and low-tuition schools, which may undermine competitiveness on the field.
In light of these and other difficulties in designing a need-only system that has integrity, is fair, and continues to provide access where it is needed, the Coalition cannot now propose the end of athletics scholarships. However, as noted earlier, the premises and impact of athletics scholarships conflict in significant ways with the principle of our academic mission, and the Coalition urges continued efforts to design a system that does not permit them on bases other than need.
We note also that to the degree that athletes are awarded generous scholarships on the basis of non-academic criteria other than need, the principle that athletes should be treated similarly to other students is deeply compromised.
Pay for play
The Coalition does not support proposals to compensate athletes through means other than scholarship support. Intercollegiate athletics on college campuses plays a constructive role when it is an amateur pursuit designed to enhance the academic experience. The athlete who represents an institution does so as a representative of the student body, engaging in an extracurricular activity designed to enhance his or her academic experience. If these activities were not of direct benefit to the student participant, there would be no rationale for supporting them.
We do not support “pay for play” because it does not conform to the principles underlying the Coalition’s support of college sports. To the degree that institutions abandon those principles, they strengthen support for professionalizing the revenue sports, and undermine the Coalition’s position. The Coalition anticipates further addressing this issue in the context of athletics finances and commercialization.