October 13, 2011, here on slacktivist: College is not a financial investment
Colleges may still fret about “graduation rates” for Division I athletes, but once they accepted the argument that college education is primarily an investment in future income, they lost any basis for opposing an athlete’s decision to turn pro before graduating. Allen Iverson left Georgetown after only one year and thus secured for himself everything that the school had promised to provide — a higher future income. If that is primarily what college is for, then why shouldn’t someone like him leap to take the cash in the NBA draft?
Once universities began arguing that these higher incomes were the biggest reason to enroll, then they lost every right and reason to criticize athletes like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James for skipping college altogether to go directly into the NBA from high school.
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