Professional Blog Post

This post is going to be about student athletes, but most importantly the grades of those student athletes and how they compare to those of students who do not participate in athletes. This is a big deal in today’s world because the popularity trend of athletes is on the rise, as noted by all of the media focus on famous sports and athletes around the world.

Athletes are recognized by sports fanatics who want to be them.Athletics are the most popular of extracurricular activities for students. Because of this we need to take a closer look and see what the impact will be on  not only athletic careers, but more importantly, academic careers and the life of athletes after their athletic careers are over.

A very common theme across the research provided by authors who have examined the correlation between academic success and participation in athletics deals with student-athletes’ grades and their success or lack thereof while being a student-athlete.  One challenge, that of having inconsistent research findings as previously mentioned, must be continuously considered as this topic is examines as it is important to identify that there numerous perceptions when it comes to agreement upon what is interpreted to be seen as positive and negative outcomes of being a student-athlete.

Some positive outcomes  come from the availability to access extra help if needed, and the inherent motivation for student-athletes to do good in the classroom in order to be eligible. (Adler, 1985). On the other side of things a negative effect is that researchers  have found that some student athletes do not care about their academic career and are just attending college in order to play intercollegiate athletics (Adler, 1985). It was also found that although the student athletes may have lower overall grades, they will have still have a high chance of graduation due to all of the extra help and resources that they are offered.

Shulman and  Bowen (2011) discusses how incoming college athletes were, on average less prepared for college academically often because of differences in acceptance rates and other special conditions. This is because, on occasion  some student-athletes, that would not usually be admitted into a certain university or a certain program within a university are sometimes given acceptance, in disregard of their comparative qualifications, because of some other unique situational conditions.

Some athletes typically receive lower grades than non-athletes. This is partially the result of having an academic skill-set that was not strong enough to get them accepted into a certain university.  There is debate on whether or not athletics help or harm academics details how hard it is to determine for certain any findings due to all of the different intervening factors like their major and academic background.(Maloney & McCormick, 1993).  Athletes are more likely to be talked about and “stories about the academic successes and failures of athletes so far outweigh similar stories about nonathletes.” (Maloney & McCormick, 1993, p.555). This attention puts added pressure on student athletes to succeed as much as possible because they are being watched and constantly examined, a viewpoint that reinforces the sources cited earlier about athletes’ grades.

In the past there was a strong trend that college athletes got lower grades and had a lower graduation rates. As time goes on there certainly seems to be a change occuring in that trend. There is a wide variety of studies going on there is a lot of  data and agreement upon what data is relevant but among the most popular of their conclusions is that over the years student-athlete grades on average are becoming closer and closer to the averages of all students. Some studies also have shown that athletes are not as prepared or as qualified for college.

Athletes may receive help if needed.(Melendez, 2006) Another source that had very similar findings was Purdy, Eitzen and  Hufnagel (1982) their findings suggest that that the student-athletes did not exceed as well as non-athletes in the classroom. However the results changed when they broke their study down by studying each specific sport. Although their overall findings are the same, they found that not all student-athletes were even necessarily similar in the classroom setting. It showed that men’s basketball and football had the lowest GPAs and had the worst overall academic standing in college athletics.  

Aries (2004) held a study at an ivy league school and looked at their  student-athletes entering academic standing and compared their collegiate academic standings. Although they found that they had lower incoming grades they did not show that trend as much as expected during their time at the University. Perhaps the narrowing gap in that study can be explained by Adlers’ (1985) study cited earlier which stated that student athletes receive extra help in their academic studies when they need it. To compare Aries (2004) findings  to Purdy, Eitzen and Hufnagel (1982) also found that student-athletes’ grades are lower on average than the rest of the student population. With multiple sources agreeing, there seems to be a trend although there is other research that has been done that shows that student-athletes perform just as well and actually have higher graduation rates(Purdy, Eitzen, & Hufnagel, 1982).

In conclusion there is an impact on individuals who participate in athletics and make it a part of their lifestyle. The grades of individuals vary from those who are athletes when compared with the grades of those who are not. However the findings on this topic of research has not been consistent so far and there will continue to do  more research in the future. Through their involvement of athletics, athletes are often given opportunities to gain individual life lessons and acquired learning and social skills.