If I had to name the most influential people in my life, all of them would be teachers. Sure, I’d be able to name a few people of different professions, but if we’re being totally honest, I struggle. There are coaches who stand out, neighbors who stand out, but every time I try and think of more people who have inspired me throughout my life, I always come back to teachers. Mr. Beck in 4th grade. Mrs. McClure in 7th grade. Mr. Brisini in 9th grade. Mrs. Lowry in 11th, and Ms. Gamage in 12th. It’s important to note, too, that I’m cutting out a number of others simply for the sake of length. I could go on and on listing the ways in which my teachers influenced my life.

I believe lots of you reading this now can relate to this sentiment. Outside of family members, teachers tend to be the most influential people in the lives of young adults. And this makes sense. After all, the average child in America will spend 1,000 hours in school each year. They are constantly surrounded by teachers, and, in some cases, they are surrounded by teachers more than they are surrounded by their parents. Not only do teachers uphold the responsibility of educating these children, but they also uphold the responsibility of being positive role models for them. It’s a heavy burden, and it is essential for these educators to be able to carry it. This can only be achieved, though, if we continue to place large value on teaching as a profession.

The value of educators, though, has certainly seen a decrease in recent years. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average salary of public elementary and secondary school teachers dropped five percent between 2009 and 2016. This drop was especially prominent in the states of Oklahoma and Colorado, where the average salaries dropped 17 and 16 percent, respectively. There were numerous states that did see growth in teacher salaries, but their gains were not enough to offset the losses of those in states like Oklahoma and Colorado.

To make matters worse, the Economic Policy Institute found and reported that, even after factoring in benefits, public school teachers in America face a compensation penalty of 11.1 percent relative to other college graduates. I guess this makes a little bit of sense. Besides, teachers in the lower grades of schooling aren’t teaching kids abstract concepts. In many cases, teachers in those lower grades are glorified babysitters. As a proponent of raising teacher pay, I am willing to admit that. But these teachers who are responsible for educating younger children also have the obligation to help teach these kids the norms and rules of society. The very seeds that allow for people to become upstanding American citizens are planted in the early stages of education. Teachers play a significant role in facilitating this particular growth. As aforementioned, kids are surrounded by teachers for an average of 1,000 hours a year.

As kids move up in their schooling and begin to learn more difficult material, teachers now have more of a responsibility to teach. However, they still carry the burden of developing their students into young men and women in America. Outside of family, I can’t think of any other people who are as crucial to children in this respect. Being a teacher is not an easy thing to do, but it is one of the most vital professions in our society.

I think there’s a large portion of the general public that has regained sight of just how important teachers are. Then, of course, there are the Americans who never lost sight of a teacher’s significance. These two groups together are the main reason why support for increased teacher pay is suddenly rising. A survey conducted in 2018 found that public support for boosting teacher salaries was at its highest percentage rate since 2008. When survey participants were shown how much teachers in their state earned, 49% of them stated that they deserved to make more. That number was 36% in the previous year.

The American people are calling for higher teacher salaries far more than they ever have in recent years. Support is rising, but no change is being made. Quite frankly, it’s alarming. As I stated earlier, the value of teachers is astronomically high in our society. They deserve to be rewarded for all of their contributions in developing generations of American citizens. By rewarding them with higher pay, teachers will be able to fulfill their responsibilities more effectively and more comfortably; it would draw people towards the profession. However, if we continue to snub our teachers when it comes to pay, we will deter suitable teachers away from pursuing a career in education.

Teachers are some of the most influential people in a child’s everyday life. We need to ensure that the best and brightest teachers are there to guide young learners, and the only way to do this is to raise teacher salaries.

I believe diversity on college campuses is very important. College, after all, should be a period of growth and development. It should be a time to become acclimated to more of a real-world setting. Personally speaking, I grew up in a rather non-diverse area. I lived in a relatively small suburban town, and even though I was involved in a wide array of activities in and out of school, it was still rare for me to meet a person who was not white. I was exposed to more of a diverse area when I attended a large high school in Charleston, South Carolina, but it wasn’t until I came to Penn State when my eyes were really opened for the first time.

I now live with people who are African-American, Indian, Chinese, etc. I’ve been able to learn a little bit about each of their respective cultures. Even by simply walking around campus, I’ve been able to witness the ways in which people from different backgrounds interact. It’s incredibly common for me to hear somebody speaking in a different language while I’m on my way to class. In fact, I could probably count the days on my fingers where I didn’t hear somebody speaking a different language. And while it may sound somewhat insignificant, I think these experiences help in, as I stated above, growing and developing as a person. At the very least, being surrounded by a diverse group of people allows for more personal cognitive development.

It also helps to be surrounded by a diverse group of people from an academic perspective. A seminal study released 17 years ago found that relationships and interactions with people from other racial groups had a fairly profound impact on students’ overall learning. Overall, these connections aid in producing better thinkers and scholars.

The benefits of diversity that I’m describing are from the perspective of a white male, but there are, obviously, a great deal of benefits for minority students when a college makes the effort to increase the diversity of their campus. It allows for more opportunity within minority populations—populations that have been underrepresented in America’s higher education system. In 2009, for example, 28% of all Americans over the age of 25 had a four-year college degree. However, only 17% of all African-Americans over the age of 25 had a four-year college degree. Within Hispanic populations, that number was even worse—13%. The point is that there’s a major misalignment in the proportions of people of different races graduating from college. By attempting to increase opportunity for minority groups, colleges can help in eliminating that gap.

It also makes sense to create more of a diverse makeup in higher education. At the end of one’s time in college, they should be fully capable of entering the workforce and contributing to society. As of right now, 36% of the workforce is comprised of people of color. By 2050, it’s estimated that number will rise to 50%. One out of every two workers will most likely be a person of color, so wouldn’t it make sense for a college to bring in more of these people? To provide them with a better chance of gaining a higher education? If one of the goals of college is to get students career-ready, it would be wise to fully invest in our future workforce.

However, a common concern with increased diversity is the question of how much it should factor into college admissions processes. The backgrounds of prospective students have become a significant part of the decision-making process. For example, an African-American student with a slightly lower SAT score than that of a white student may be accepted into a university because their racial background is more valuable than a few points on a standardized test. I find this to be alright—that is, to an extent. Princeton University did a study on just how much minority backgrounds can tip the scale of standard admissions criteria at elite universities. The researchers found that the average African-American’s SAT score was, on average, being weighted an extra 230 points on the basis of their skin color. For Asian people, though, their SAT scores were being reduced by an average of 50 points. This was despite the fact that Asians are, in fact, a minority group in America. Admissions officers were picking and choosing which minority groups to bolster up and which minority groups they were going to peg down. I suppose these people were trying to strike the perfect balance of racial and ethnic groups on their campuses, but this certainly took away from the hard work and achievements displayed by a large portion of minority students.

Overall, diversity on college campuses is important, but once people start to tear down qualified students to achieve diversity, that’s where I draw the line.

The College Board might be the most corrupt organization I have ever come in contact with in my life.

The College Board is, of course, the organization that offers the SAT, but perhaps what they are more popular for nowadays, at least, is their administering of Advanced Placement (AP) tests. Students can enroll in an AP class during high school, and, come the end of the school year, they can test their knowledge in the subject by taking a standardized test that is available to every student in the country enrolled in that same AP course. Scores are given on a 1-5 scale, with 1 being the lowest score possible and 5 being the highest. In order to pass the exam, students must garner a score of 3 or higher. The initial goal of the AP exam (or what people thought the goal was, at least) was to allow the students who passed to gain credit for a college course in that subject area. After all, these AP courses were supposed to be taught at a college-level. However, numerous flaws with the system arose in a rather short period of time.

For starters, the whole idea that these AP courses were supposed to be taught at a college-level did not come to fruition. There are AP courses out there that are quite challenging for high school students, but there are also plenty of AP courses that are not. Former college professor and current high school teacher John Tierney once said that AP courses don’t “hold a candle” to the college courses he taught. In his eyes, the teachers of these classes simply didn’t demand enough of their students. Speaking from personal experience, I took an AP course in high school because I was told it was a GPA-booster. Sure enough, the large majority of the activities we did in class dealt with arts and crafts, and this was no art class. We barely learned anything the entire year. Nearly everybody in the class got high grades on their report cards, but when it came time to take the AP test, none of us were truly prepared. Consequently, a large portion of us didn’t even pass; the scores of those who did weren’t that impressive, either. But the problem with my personal experience, as is the problem with lots of students’ experiences across the country, was that we weren’t actually given a college education in that course. So many people didn’t receive college credit, which, again, was supposed to be the whole goal of the course. And the people who did receive college credit didn’t deserve it; they just happened to get lucky on a standardized test.

This brings up another concern: Those who pass the exam, whether they’re lucky or legitimately prepared, are not guaranteed college credit anymore. The situation used to be pretty cut and dry—if you scored a 3 on the exam, you received credit in the college course that corresponded with the AP subject. This is no longer the case, though. Somewhere along the way, specific colleges decided that, in some AP subjects, they were only going to give credit to students who scored a 4 or higher. Some colleges only accepted 5’s, while others decided they weren’t going to award college credit to anybody. The bottom line was that there was no longer any uniformity with the system, and there still isn’t. According to the College Board, among the 4,000 U.S. colleges that accept AP scores, there are 51,000 separate policies on awarding credit for the exams. Some colleges realized rather quickly that these AP courses were not up to par. Other colleges realized that these AP courses were losing them a great deal of money in some cases. Students could gather a bunch of credit through AP courses and enter with a second semester standing; some could even enter as a sophomore. These students could graduate early and forgo paying tuition for a couple semesters, which did not please a number of universities. These colleges decided to change their policies, and the College Board couldn’t do anything about it.

Sticking with the concept of money, it’s important to dive into the financial side of the College Board. They are supposedly a non-profit organization, yet in 2017, they generated over $1 billion in total revenue. Their president, David Coleman, is also expected to earn roughly $750,000 this year. The vast majority of this money comes from exam fees. Each AP exam in 2018 cost $94, which was a $1 increase from 2017. The $93 in 2017 was a $1 increase from the year before. Essentially, the price raises a dollar every year, which results in millions of dollars in additional revenue for the College Board. But the price of the exam was expensive to begin with. I was fortunate to go to a school where the district paid for all of our exams, but other districts didn’t have that luxury. There are plenty of gifted students whose families simply can’t afford the fees for each AP exam. And the people who can afford to take the exams may spend $94 just to gain zero college credit, even if they pass. But that doesn’t matter to the cash cow that is the College Board. They have a monopoly over education, and they’re going to continue to reap the benefits.

I hope you now see why the College Board is so terrible.

The size of a class can have profound effects on a child’s learning. Typically speaking in the United States, a larger concentration of students in a classroom yields less growth compared to a smaller concentration. The concept has been tested on multiple occasions, and the overwhelming data that supports smaller class sizes has been noted. So why is it, then, that we commonly see classrooms consisting of numbers above world averages?

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a relatively unique forum where governments of 34 democracies with market economies work with each other, along with 70 other non-member economies to promote economic growth, prosperity, and sustainable development. A little under ten years ago, the OECD released new data regarding teachers’ working hours, pay, and demographics. Also included in the data was the average class size in public schools within each of the OECD member countries. The average class size in OECD countries is 21.4, while the average class size in the United States is 23.1. This disparity may not seem like a lot, but it’s one of the main reasons why the U.S. doesn’t even crack the top 10 in the vast majority of global education system rankings.

If there are less kids in a classroom, there is more opportunity for interaction between teachers and students. This interaction is vital for a number of reasons. For starters, a bond with a teacher can help alleviate some of the pressures of school life. It helps to know there is an adult there to help you with certain problems, both in and outside of the classroom. Secondly, a bond with a teacher can result in greater motivation for the student to do their best. The teacher may push a pupil or a pupil may fear disappointing their teacher. Or both. And a teacher can also inspire a student to care about the material they are learning. Above all, a bond with a teacher allows for a more 1-on-1 style of learning.

Traditionally, a better way of attaining that 1-on-1 style of learning for children in America has been to put them through private schools. That is, of course, if their families could afford private schools. The average tuition of a private school in the United States is upwards of $10,000 per year. However, if one could attain this level of education for their child/children, it certainly does pay off in the case of classroom size. As mentioned above, the average class size in American public schools is 23.1 students. The average class size in public primary schools, however, is 23.6. This class size consists of over four more students than the average private primary school (19.4). Those in private schools are getting more 1-on-1 interaction with their teachers, which is resulting in learning opportunities that public school students simply cannot receive.

If a family can’t afford private schooling for their child/children, perhaps they could send them to a tutor. This, too, would help a student gain more of a personal connection during their studies. Yet again, though, this costs money—money that most families in America don’t have. The ironic part about this situation is that lots of the families in most need of money for education are the ones who are most affected by large class sizes.

A recent study by The Education Trust shows that in more than half of the states in America, the poorest school districts do not receive funding to address their students’ individual needs. Moreover, school districts with the highest rates of poverty receive roughly $1000 less per student than those with the lowest rates of poverty. With this lack of funding, poorer school districts are not able to employ an adequate number of teachers. With less teachers comes less classes. And with less classes comes more students per class. We’ve seen an alarming amount of public schools shut down in recent years, simply because they have become overcrowded; there aren’t enough funds to hire teachers and maintain control over students. These are the students who most desperately need private schooling or tutoring, but they are at an incredible disadvantage financially.

Now, whenever the topic of classroom size is brought up, it’s hard to ignore countries in Asia. Japan, for example, is home to a booming population and has no choice but to overpack their classrooms. Their class sizes are among the largest in the world, yet their education system is consistently one of the best. This is due to the fact that there are differing norms in Japanese culture. There is more of a structured set of roles within a classroom, and there is a higher emphasis placed on education, as a whole. Large classrooms may work over in Japan, but they’re not working here.

Studies have shown repeatedly that smaller American class sizes are the best route to aid student growth. Therefore, smaller class sizes are what we should strive to create for the betterment of this country and its children.

In 2013, the Los Angeles Unified School District created an initiative to put an iPad in the hands of each and every one of their 650,000 students. The initiative would, in total, cost 1.3 billion dollars. The district partnered with Pearson Education to formulate an online curriculum students could access through their individual iPads. The iPads were distributed, the curriculum had been developed, and the Los Angeles Unified School District was ready to transform the way their students learned forever.

The venture ultimately failed. The Pearson programming was full of glitches. Students found a way to hack into their devices. The district’s accessibility to WiFi was not sufficient enough for this enhanced use of internet technology. Everything was simply a mess. The district is still trying to recover from this venture, which, in itself, is alarming. But what’s far more alarming is the fact that people, in the first place, were willing to put forth a plan that would base education entirely on technology.

With the rise of smartphones and personalized computers, it’s natural for school districts to try and incorporate more technology into the curriculum. After all, students are rather comfortable using technology, as it is one of the most common things they do in their day-to-day lives. However, once you make technology the primary component in a learning environment, then you will run into a multitude of problems, as evidenced by the Los Angeles Unified School District. I find it significant to detail the other issues that could potentially occur with technology-dependent systems of learning.

For starters, there is far less human interaction. Technology has already been known to have negative impacts on younger generations when it comes to critical social skills, and increased technology in schooling only adds to that problem. How can students be able to communicate with one another effectively when they have their head in an iPad or computer all day just to go home and have their head in their phone or TV for hours at a time? It’s just not possible. Students need to be interacting with other humans, whether it be their peers or teachers, in order to cultivate the social skills that are quintessential in establishing a successful life.

Speaking of teachers, students need to be learning from them in-person. With increased learning through technology, you’d see a rapid decrease in the need for teachers. Their value would most certainly decline, and I find this to be quite frightening. It’s important for students to learn how to respect adults and act properly in a group setting. On top of that, teachers serve as role models for kids in their early lives, but they can’t be role models through an iPad screen. It helps to have a relationship with somebody who is trying to help you grow as a learner and as a human being. That relationship is thrown out the window when schools transition more into these technological-based courses.

Teachers, often times, are the ones who inspire students to care about the material, too. We all have that one favorite teacher–the teacher we looked forward to seeing every class. For me, that teacher was Mr. Tyler, who taught me European history in my sophomore year of high school. I had no desire to learn about European history, whatsoever, but Mr. Tyler was able to peak my interest in the subject. His passion for the material and his ability to take command of a room were the two things I admired most about him, but those two things couldn’t be replicated if I was learning European history in an online setting. I loved Mr. Tyler’s class because of Mr. Tyler, just like I loved Mrs. Lowry’s class because of Mrs. Lowry or Mr. Brisini’s class because of Mr. Brisini. The energy they all brought to the classroom was infectious, and the bond I was able to establish with each of them was, and still is, so special to me.

Not having that bond can be detrimental to a student’s learning experience. It creates an environment where there is less accountability, considering there’s not someone there to push you to do better. There’s also nobody there to get you invested in the material. these two factors are pivotal in explaining why online college courses have a higher dropout rate than regular courses.

Even if students decide to stay enrolled in these online courses, there is a much higher risk of those students compromising their academic integrity. It’s much easier to do this when you have access to the internet, so students could take an simpler way out and cheat rather than try to actually learn the material that’s being “taught” to them. Besides, what is there to stop them?

I fear for the future of education. I fear that an over-reliance on technology will be its downfall. Laptops, iPads, smartphones–they should all be used to aid learning. They shouldn’t be learning.

There is a wide variety of problems within the education system in America, but one problem is, actually, more of an exterior phenomenon. In recent years, the amount of college students diagnosed with anxiety has skyrocketed. A large part of their anxiety, in most cases, comes from school. In fact, 75% of all people with anxiety show symptoms of the disorder prior to their 22nd birthday, which signifies how stressful the life of a full-time student can be. The American education system has demanded too much of the average student, and it is negatively impacting young adults all across America.

In 2014, a Penn State study found that anxiety had surpassed depression as the leading mental health concern amongst college students. It was later concluded by the American College Health Association that one in every six college students had been treated for or diagnosed with anxiety over a twelve-month span. It’s important to identify why, exactly, anxiety has spiked, as of late. Here are just a few potential causes.

Reason #1: Non-stop dependence on assessments

In today’s age of schooling, the predominant way teachers/professors grasp how much their students know is through testing. For some instructors, this is the only way. An overload of examinations is not ideal for students’ learning–as we discussed in the last blog–and it is even worse for the mental health of students. They are constantly being judged by a letter or a grade, and if that judgement isn’t consistently good, it can lead to a sense of hopelessness for students.

Reason #2: Lack of plans for the future

There are many students who come to college knowing exactly what they want to do in life. There are also many students who have no clue what that purpose is–between 20-50%, to be exact. And that’s fine–they just got out of high school, for crying out loud. However, before they even step foot on a college campus, they are being told to choose a major. Once they get on campus, they’re being told that they need to take certain classes that fit with that major. And they’re told that they should stick with their major or else it’ll bring them a whole bunch of hassle. In lots of cases, students feel trapped. There’s so much pressure placed on students to determine what they want to do for the rest of their lives at such a young age. Interests change, people change. But the higher education system does not, necessarily, account for that.

Reason #3: Rising expectations from employers

Just two generations ago, college was not a requirement, so to speak. One could graduate from high school and go straight into the work force; they could make a pretty good living that way, too. Then, jobs became more competitive. Only people who went to college could stand out from the pack. As more college students entered the work force, the more selective employers had to be with their hiring processes. It was no longer a matter of whether you went to college–it was a matter of where you went to college. The point is, within the span of two generations, there has been this massive shift in how employers choose their candidates. The bar has been raised to a very significant degree, and it’s a bar that’s still rising. Students are feeling an increased pressure to keep up with the times, because they fear their future is at stake if they don’t.

Reason #4: Inescapability of school

In this era of schooling, there’s no separation between school life and personal life. Years ago, students would go to school, come home, do their homework, study a little bit, and that was the end of it. If their teacher/professor didn’t tell them in class that there was homework, there was no homework. If their teacher/professor didn’t tell them in class that there was a quiz or a test, there was no quiz or test. There was no such thing as e-mailing students. There was no such thing as Canvas or Remind101. Nowadays, you can go to class and come out thinking that you have the rest of the day to do whatever you want. Then, all of a sudden, you get an e-mail from your professor with a bunch of course readings attached. Not to mention, lots of universities (like Penn State) require students to have a laptop. This allows professors to assign more projects, essays, etc., because they know each student has the technological capacity to complete these assignments at home. This wasn’t the case a decade ago, let alone two or three decades ago. When you got home from class, you were no longer in class. Weekends were actually weekends. Young adults nowadays are, essentially, in class 24/7, because as long as they have a smartphone or a laptop, the thought of school will always be looming over them. This creates endless stress and anxiety for students.

Throughout our entire educational lives, our intelligence has been quantified by a number, an average, a letter, etc. The focus has always been on getting good grades, but what exactly does getting good grades entail? Does it mean absorbing and understanding the material being taught? Or does it mean prioritizing results over input? Obviously, every student is wired differently. There are portions of students who love to learn—who value the material being introduced to them. However, there are also portions of students who don’t care at all about learning, as they only care about getting the grade they desire. It’s been an interesting dilemma in education for quite some time, ever since 1792.

It was at this time that William Farish, a tutor at the University of Cambridge, tried to think of a more efficient way of quantifying the progress of his students. He found the idea of grading their assignments with a number to be highly efficient, as it was much less time-consuming than actually communicating with each of his pupils. This new method allowed him to expand the number of students he tutored, which, in turn, brought him more wealth.

So the idea of grading was not conceived in order to help the student; it was conceived to help the teacher—in this case, a lazy and selfish one. Nonetheless, the system caught on, as number grades were reduced to letter grades in 1897. Mount Holyoke College was the first to institute letter grades, but the method quickly trickled down to lower levels of education.

Whether it’s numbers or grades, the same constant remains true: Students are rewarded with some indication of their “progress”, and, in many cases, it’s this reward that they strive for solely; the gift of knowledge is barely even on their mind. Speaking from a psychological standpoint, you can’t say students are in the wrong for thinking this way. Sure, knowledge in the long run is going to be more beneficial, but in the short term, grades are a more significant reward. After all, our society has deemed grades as the most important thing in the universe, which we will absolutely touch upon in a little bit.

Still dealing with the psychological aspect of this situation, though, it’s absolutely natural for students to seek a reward of good grades over a gift of knowledge. Good grades are an example of what is known in the world of psychology as extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is when a person is encouraged to perform a behavior or engage in an activity to earn a reward or avoid punishment. The key part of that definition, for the sake of this blog, is the part that deals with avoiding punishment. The punishment in education is, of course, failing. That’s literally what an F grade stands for—fail. And if a student fails a test, their average is tarnished. If their average is tarnished, then they won’t get into a good college. If they don’t get into a good college, then they won’t get a good job. And if they don’t get a good job, then their lives will be ruined.

That’s the way we’ve made our society out to be, isn’t it? Each part of life feeds into the next, so if you fail in one stage, you’re setting yourself up for a lesser stage ahead. Students, the majority of them, at least, want to be the most successful they can be in the grand scheme of life. What they don’t understand, though, is that in order to be successful, you have to fail. You have to hit a few bumps in the road. You have to learn from your failures and come back stronger. But our education system doesn’t teach them that. Our education system teaches kids that failing is bad—that failing is the end of the world. Students fear failing to an extreme, so they do everything in their power not to. This means taking the shortcuts. This means only skimming textbooks for what you need to know on a test. This means cheating on assignments if you’re either too clueless or too lazy to complete them. This means being less interested in the subject material because you’re only worried about the grade.

Moving away from grading in education would shift the motivation of students from extrinsic to intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is to engage in certain behavior because it is personally rewarding. In other words, the behavior, itself, is the reward. If there are no grades and students are learning simply to learn, the fulfillment they’ll receive will be greater than any external reward they could attain. This fulfillment will only encourage them to gain more knowledge in school and beyond.

How would we assess which students are more advanced than others if there was no such thing as grades? If we’re being totally honest, I have no idea; I don’t know how we would find that solution (some research points towards focusing on task-oriented goals, but I’m not sure if this would be suitable). What I am sure of, though, is that the system we have in place right now isn’t working anywhere near as well as it should be.

Author and lecturer Alfie Kohn has chronicled the effects of grading systems in American education through studies for decades, and he has come to three main conclusions:

1. Grades tend to diminish students’ interest in whatever they’re learning
2. Grades create a preference for the easiest possible task
3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students’ thinking

All of these conclusions have been detailed in this blog, and all of these conclusions are causes for concern in American education. The most prominent concept students are learning is how to cheat the system. If the goal of education is to distribute actual knowledge, then we, as a society, might want to look at reform within the schooling system.

It’s no secret that I am a sports nut. I started playing sports when I was four years old, and I always dreamed of being an athlete in college. When I was younger, I didn’t necessarily think about what impact I would have on my college had I been able to achieve that dream; I just thought it would be cool to play a game that I loved for another four years. However, now that I’m in college as a full-time student, I’ve been able to observe just how much influence athletics has over my university and universities across the nation. It sure is a lot, but I, personally, have no problem with it.

I have no problem with it because the positive effects that athletics have on colleges far outweigh the negative effects. I’m not saying athletics have only done good for higher education; if you were to take athletics out of higher education entirely, you would absolutely have a purer educational atmosphere. Students would be choosing their college based more on the college’s academic reputation, athletes wouldn’t be cut any slack in the admissions process or in the classroom, etc. Overall, higher education would be in its most untainted form, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it would be in its best form. The product universities try and sell to prospective students would be much worse, and here’s why.

Athletic departments offer opportunity for growth

The amount of exposure athletic programs give to their respective universities cannot be quantified. Of course, the sport with the most impact on higher education is football. The best football teams are consistently put on national television, which is arguably the best endorsement a university could ever receive. Every person with a TV has the ability to see university colors, a university logo, or, most importantly, a university name when they tune into watch college football. It’s advertising for these colleges. And the better your team performs, the more recognition you can receive on a national scale. With more recognition comes more applicants. With more recognition comes more students. With more students comes more alumni and donors. And with more alumni and donors comes more money for the university. This money can be filtered into expanding the campus, constructing new buildings, hiring better faculty, and so on. All these improvements pay off because they, in turn, become a factor in even more students choosing these booming colleges.

The New York times chronicled the journey that Brianna Zavilowitz took to get to the University of Alabama, one of the best football schools in history. The university has capitalized on the success of the football program by adding 64 new buildings on campus and, more importantly, by hiring dozens of academic recruiters to attract out-of-state students. Studies show out-of-state students tend to be the most prepared academically, which explains why Alabama’s average GPA of entering freshman is an impressive 3.66, up over 0.20 from a decade ago. They’re now targeting students like Zavilowitz, who got accepted into California-Berkeley, and they have also become the fastest-growing flagship school in the country. But this cycle doesn’t even start if the university doesn’t receive that initial recognition from the football program. Sports offer universities an amazing way to grow and enrich the experiences of their students.

Athletic departments offer opportunity for selection

Sports allow for colleges to grow, but what if a school doesn’t want to grow? Maybe they don’t have the ability to grow. Clemson University is a perfect example of this hypothetical. For those who don’t know where Clemson is, it’s located in the hills of upstate South Carolina and it’s surrounded by absolutely nothing of significance. There are no tourist attractions. There are no palm trees or beaches. It’s farmland. The point is there’s not much about Clemson that would catch people’s eye. That is until the football team started to find success. In 2016, Clemson football won the National Championship. According to the university’s director of admissions, the applicant pool in the year following the National Championship victory increased by 11% (7:40 in the video). In just a year’s time, Clemson saw the number of people wanting to attend their university rise dramatically. Unfortunately, Clemson was not prepared for the heightened popularity, and they were unable to accommodate for the larger applicant pool. They made the decision to remain roughly the same size as the college was prior to its football success, which gave them the ability to be more selective in the admissions process. Therefore, the quality of the students enrolled at Clemson has only risen over the past few years. In fact, ACT and SAT scores, along with the number of Clemson freshmen who were in the top 10% of their high school class, were enough to rank Clemson as one of the top 15 public universities in the country. Thanks to the football program, a small college in the middle of nowhere turned into one of the nation’s premier learning environments.

Athletics teach young adults what they cannot learn in a classroom

Yes, it is true that the majority of student athletes are not getting the same education as those who don’t play sports. Between practice, games, and travel, it’s very difficult for athletes to learn in a normal manner. While this may cause them to lack in knowledge about certain subjects, they are making up for it by learning lessons through the world of sports. Leadership, commitment, determination, teamwork—athletes are learning how to be better in each of these areas and more. They’re acquiring traits that you simply cannot acquire in a classroom setting, and they’re applying these traits in their interactions with people and the community around them. In my opinion, sports have always been one of the world’s best teachers. If you were to take sports out of college, you’d be losing a lot more than just money and prestige.

Now obviously, nobody is really arguing to take sports entirely out of college. However, people tend to criticize how much sports play a role in higher educational affairs, so I figured taking this particular approach would be best suited to portray the necessity of collegiate athletics and why they should play a role in how a university operates. In other words, they should not be independent from the university, in the slightest. Sports should continue to be a vital component of higher education, as they improve the overall makeup of universities in ways that nothing else can.