Teaching a class likely meant to inflate the GPA of student athletes | Hacker News Reader

Teaching a class likely meant to inflate the GPA of student athletes

academia.stackexchange.com

26 pointswlkr6 comments

Who cares if a couple of athletes need to fulfill their university requirements and get an inflated grade in whatever mickey mouse degree they are taking? This isn't a battle worth fighting over.

The real issue is that nowadays there's a substantial contingent of nursing school aspirants who have no clue about 8th grade math and who think the general education requirements are just an impediment on their way towards a well-paying career. In my experience, it's usually students from a disadvantaged background. You fail them, then they march off to administration and get their passing grade.

It's a public safety issue, nurses who can't calculate dosages. Reddit has a discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Professors/comments/b8sx90/nursingc...

Why don't they make it explicit and award the athletes a degree in the sport they play, with appropriate but honest requirements?

because we all play make believe that athletes aren't employees that we're all fucking over and not paying. Because they aren't employees, they need an "education". But that "education" needs to be appropriately easy, to not conceivably fuck up the real reason they're there: to make other people money.

No, really, parent is right. Why not issue a degree in football or basketball? It's no more ridiculous than many other majors. In fact, it's less so.

And x0x0 is right: it sounds like a major reason is that then we'd have to pay them.

I did work in my field(s) of study as an undergraduate, and I was paid for it. That's how jobs go. You produce something of real value, outside the classroom, and the university pays you money for it.

Presumably, if football players were doing professional-level work in their official field of study, they would be able to insist on earning a paycheck from it, too. And there's a lot of money in football.

(Well, not at my university -- the team was not especially good, and the tickets were all free -- but at many others.)

Complain to the regional university credentialing authority.

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