February 28, 2023
Colleges and universities are referred to as “higher education.” It is where many people go after they have finished high school to learn about the career they want to pursue. That is the idea, or at least, that was the original idea.
Long ago colleges and universities started sports teams as an activity for those who wanted to play on them, and for students who wanted to watch the games. Those who played on the teams were students first, and athletes second.
Over the last several decades athletics have taken on much greater importance for the institutions, athletes, and audiences. A vast number of Americans in and out of college rank college sports as one of their main interests.
Colleges and coaches rake in huge amounts of money, and the people that make it possible for them to earn the big bucks get a free or reduced-cost education.
This heavy influence from the sporting world has so far not affected the role that higher education is supposed to play nearly as much as the encroachment of indoctrination into the curricula.
But things are changing. As of July, 2021, “college athletes can profit from their name, image or likeness (NIL) under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “It’s a new era for the sprawling, multibillion-dollar college sports industry, and in these early days it’s a messy one.”
Looking at the current college athletics situation, The Hill offered the following: “In addition to debt-free college, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, student-athletes receive coaching and counseling that pays off throughout life,” the article said.
“The economics literature recognizes that even a year of college has measurable benefits. Student-athletes learn the valuable life skills of discipline and teamwork,” The Hill article continued. “They learn to cooperate with people of diverse backgrounds. These activities shape character, with lifetime consequences. In addition, college athletics is a platform connecting students, academics, alums and fans more generally.”
Now there is talk of college athletes being paid outright, as if they have a job. But if you are paid to play a sport, aren’t you a professional athlete?
Higher education has many problems: politics in the learning environment; very high and rising tuition rates; and also, recently focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
What exactly is DEI? The InclusionHub defines these terms:
Diversity: Acknowledges all the ways people differ: race, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, socioeconomic status, religious beliefs, and more.
Inclusion: Is about diversity in practice. It’s the act of welcoming, supporting, respecting, and valuing all individuals and groups.
Equity: Is often used interchangeably with equality, but there’s a core difference: Where equality is a system in which each individual is offered the same opportunities regardless of circumstance, equity distributes resources based on needs. We live in a disproportionate society, and equity tries to correct its imbalance by creating more opportunities for people.
The InclusionHub also mentions Belonging and Justice.
Belonging: Infers that an equitable structure is in place and functioning to make all people, no matter their differences, feel welcome. When you reach for equity, you’re striving for a system that benefits everyone, no matter their circumstance. Belonging is when this not only works, but no one feels as if their inclusion is questioned.
Justice: Is the mission of equity, in which an equitable system works so well it eventually eliminates the systemic problems driving the need for the latter. In other words, everything is fairly and evenly distributed to people no matter their race, gender, physical ability, or other personal circumstances.
But how will DEI work as the method for forming teams? If this concept is put into effect in sports at any level, no longer will the 11 best football players, 9 best baseball players, 5 best basketball players, etc., necessarily be who is on the first team. All teams will be formed using the rules of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, balanced by Belonging and Justice.
America has experienced great success because of the idea of being the best you can be, and that the best student, athlete, company, military, or whatever wins. The best earned the prize, which is why they got the prize. They didn’t get the prize because it’s fair and right that everyone gets the same reward, despite how good or bad they are at whatever is being rewarded.
The term that should once again and forever be the focus is: merit! You get the prize because you earned the prize. Not because you entered the contest. You are the valedictorian because you had the highest GPA, not because everyone in the senior class should be valedictorian.
By focusing on everybody getting the same reward, regardless of their ability, there is no longer any reason to try to be better, to be the best you can be.
How long will the United States remain a free country before it is taken over by another country that is determined to rule the world, and focuses on that, rather than DEI?
DEI might not spell doom in small, limited circumstances. But it is the death knell if used throughout an entire country.
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