资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

Photo by Aaron Doster/Reuters

Charting a Path Toward Paying College Athletes

A recent Supreme Court ruling may be a step toward allowing college athletes to access the income that their labor produces. That's according to RAND economist Jhacova Williams. Although the ruling did not directly address the issue of paying these athletes, it looks like the question will soon turn from if colleges should pay their athletes to how that might work.

One potential model can be found in how universities treat Ph.D. students. Like “near-pro athletes,” as Williams calls them, Ph.D. students receive tuition waivers, health benefits, and access to world-class facilities—but they're also paid salaries. If athletes were to receive salaries, then their labor hours could include game-day labor and preparation for games, and their contracts with universities could include educational requirements, such as maintaining a certain GPA.

The court's ruling “may upend college athletics in some ways that are overdue,” Williams writes. “But the model to pay them is simple labor economics.”