USA Today has an interesting piece about college tuition and collegiate baseball programs. Really, they’re related. As tuition increases, baseball suffers. According to an article by Joey Kaufman:
To college baseball programs across the country, there’s some evidence that tuition hikes could be impacting what happens on the diamond, too.
“It’s really tough on the student-athlete with the prices going up for school and with the little money they get for scholarships,” said John Savage, the head coach at UCLA, which, like most schools, opened its season about two weeks ago. “It’s really made it tough on the families of our players.”
That’s because there really isn’t much scholarship money available for baseball players. These students still have to pay tuition. The more tuition goes up (particularly in state schools), the less attractive college looks.
And if baseball players don’t go to college, colleges can’t create good baseball teams.
Tuition hikes don’t matter much for college students who play football or basketball. As the article explains, there are two types of college sports, head-count sports and equivalency sports. Head-count sports, such as football and basketball, have a specific number of full scholarships for students.
But in equivalency sports, like baseball, the team has a pot of money to offer. Coaches generally distribute the money throughout the team. But if tuition increases players have to pay more of their own money to attend school. As Kaufman explains, “the majority of [baseball] players on scholarship are still paying at least half of all tuition and fees.” [Image via]
