College is expensive.
And if you’ve been keeping an eye on your bursar bills, you know it’s only been getting more expensive as the years have gone on.
At IU, out-of-state tuition has increased by $8,000 during the last 5 years to total $32,000, and in-state tuition has increased by about $2,000 to total about $10,000, according to ? collegefactual.com.
It’s not just tuition, though.
Almost everything that goes into being a student in higher education in modern America costs more than it should, whether it’s increasingly marked-up textbooks, hiked-up rent or the highway robbery known as college meal plans.
And as explained by former University of Connecticut basketball guard Shabazz Napier last year, even athletes with full athletic scholarships have trouble paying for necessities such as food and books.
While the 86 percent poverty rate among NCAA athletes reported by the National College Players Association may be a bit of a stretch, it points to an issue that needs to be dealt with sooner rather than later.
While many of us non-athletes are stuck paying student loans and scraping together pizza and beer money just the same, we at least have the luxury of time. Most of us have the free time to make money with part-time jobs to subsidize our cost of living.
Athletes don’t.
And between practice schedules and traveling for away games, it’s nearly impossible to keep up with the demanding class schedules and assignments, let alone generate a steady income at the same time.
That’s part of the reason IU Athletic Director Fred Glass emphasized in his new Bill of Rights the importance of “cost-of-attendance” scholarships, which are intended to cover everything from books to housing, on top of tuition.
The only problem is they’re illegal under NCAA rules — for now, at least.
But with the NCAA giving more autonomy to the “Big Five” athletic conferences this year, there’s a good chance we could see more money flowing the athletes’ way through stipends like these.
Add to that the pushes for NCAA athletes’ unionization and compensation for their likenesses appearing in video games, and it seems like immense changes are just over the horizon.
That’s why I love that Glass is getting ahead of all this.
It shows IU is one of the institutions standing on the cutting edge of the business of college sports, which, in the end, is just as important as wins and losses in making its programs lucrative.
It shows a genuine level of care and commitment to athletes in a time when the NCAA, the athletes’ so-called governing body, seems more interested in maintaining its bureaucracy and making Tony Montana-esque amounts of money off them rather than ensuring their academic and fiscal well-being.
All in all, the NCAA is as obsolete and annoying as dial-up Internet, and it needs to go.
This is the first step.
aknorth@indiana.edu
