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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. The NCAA paying athletes is not just-- Not paying athletes. allowing athletes to make money is not just about the money. College sports, of course, are a multi-billion dollar industry but have long held back on paying the players or letting them make money for doing the labor behind all these great college sports games. For years, the NCAA claimed that by paying their athletes it would ruin the amateur status of the games, the concept of student-athlete, which is what many say makes college sports so special compared to the professional big leagues.

However, that recent Supreme Court ruling said that the NCAA "is not above the law," meaning antitrust laws, and can no longer bar schools from compensating their student-athletes as long as such payments are for education-related benefits. Now, some called the ruling long-overdue justice for exploited athletes, many of whom come from low-income backgrounds, and others proclaimed it as the first nail in the coffin of amateur intercollegiate sport. The most dramatic changes in the wake of the decision might not be on the football field, but rather in the admissions office, says my next guest,

Angel Pérez, Chief Executive Officer of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and contributor to The Atlantic, wrote about this for The Atlantic. He's here to talk about how these new rules could affect every student, jock, and nerd alike, as they apply to college. Angel, thanks so much for coming on. Welcome to WNYC.

Angel Pérez: Thanks for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: The headline of your article earlier this month in The Atlantic reads The Perverse consequences of the NCAA Ruling, and we'll go into what you mean by that, but maybe we should establish first that you do actually support this ruling, right?

Angel Pérez: I do actually. I do think it is long overdue and it's important that we try to move a little closer to equity for college athletes. They put an extraordinary amount of work into what they do and so the ability for them to actually profit from their work, because so many institutions of higher education, as well as other external organizations, have been profiting for so long. This is long overdue, but as you probably read in my Atlantic article, it's complicated.

Brian Lehrer: How could this decision lead to perverse consequences, as your headline puts it?

Angel Pérez: Yes. The perspective that I take is that of admission officers, and as well as colleges and universities in general. I think in this country we tend to think about college sports and we think about the big-name schools that you see on television with tons of endorsements, television rights, but the reality of the matter is the NCAA has over 1,100 institutions, and the majority of those institutions do not profit from sports. The fact that colleges and universities are now going to be competing for athletes, and one of the ways that they're going to compete is through the different incentives that they're now going to have to create for these students, one of the big concerns that colleges have is, "Where are these resources going to come from?"

The majority of colleges and universities in the United States are tuition-driven, which basically means that the way that they make their revenue is through tuition. Actually, right now, colleges and universities especially after the pandemic, are really struggling financially. If you're going to take resources from one area to put into college athletics, where are those resources going to come from? One of the things we're deeply concerned about is the fact that those resources may actually come from financial aid, which generally goes to low-income students, first-generation students, and students of color, but also that those resources might actually be coming from student services programs, they might be coming from other areas that serve students directly.

We're a little concerned about what kind of incentives colleges and universities are going to be offering and where they're going to get those resources from. Will this, in the end, mean that we're going to be admitting fewer low-income students to college? That's something yet to be seen, but we're deeply concerned about it.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your phone calls in this segment. Are you a student-athlete applying to college this fall? Are you a parent of a student? Has the Supreme Court ruling made any changes in your college decisions? Have you already seen shifts in spending taking place at any university that you're associated with as a student or a parent of a student or faculty or staff? Give us a call, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280 for Angel Pérez, Chief Executive Officer of the National Association for College Admission Counseling and contributor to The Atlantic, including on this topic, 646-435-7280 or tweet @brianlehrer. Let's talk about the rise of sports in higher ed in general. What can you tell us about the scale of student-athletes and how it has changed over the years?

Angel Pérez: Yes. If you think about it, the reality is that most colleges and universities have actually increased the number of sports over time, and actually, some particular sports have doubled. If you look at the university women's lacrosse teams across the country, those have actually doubled. Men's programs have actually increased by 61%. The reality is that the programs that have actually grown are those that tend to attract students with high incomes. Squash is an interesting example and I used that in my article because I thought this data was really interesting, the fact that the annual income of squash players is approximately $300,000.

Why does that matter? A big part of it, again, is because colleges and universities are highly tuition-driven. They need students who can actually afford to pay the entire tuition in order to meet their revenue goals. One of the ways that they do that is through strategically adding particular sports that tend to attract wealthier students. Now, of course, that could potentially have a negative effect on opening the doors a little bit wider for low-income students and marginalized populations in the country.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. In your article, you say these new rules could result in an athletic arms race of spending to recruit athletes. Is that related to what you said?

Angel Pérez: Yes, absolutely. The reality of the matter is, colleges and universities already spend millions of dollars just in the recruitment process for athletes and there's lots of camps across the country, and actually around the world that coaches actually need to attend in order to recruit students. There's already a fair amount of a college's budget that goes to the recruitment, and then, of course, the retention and support of student-athletes. The question now is, as we now have to incentivize students, provide them with more support, where are these resources going to come from?

Brian, what I want to make clear is I'm not really concerned about the huge schools that many of our guests on the show are watching on television. Those schools probably will make up those resources through the television rights, through the kinds of fundraising that they might be able to do because those are really big powerhouses. What I'm focused on is the majority of institutions in this country that for whom actually, athletics is not a revenue-generating program. They are going to have to make extraordinary sacrifices if they're going to compete. One of the questions I've been asking my friends who are college presidents and in higher education is, what is the cost of winning? What are the sacrifices we're willing to make there?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. In a way, we're talking about two different things I think. I don't mean you versus me. I mean this topic encompasses two different things. One is the actual paying of athletes by schools. The other is the freedom for the athletes, on their own, to go out and get endorsement contracts and things like that to make money off their names and reputations like professional athletes can. Are they different from each other in terms of the potential effects on admissions?

Angel Pérez: I think they can be different from each other, and here's one other point I wanted to highlight, because obviously, my focus and my deepest concern is about issues of equity. I am also deeply concerned and we're already starting to see it, that entire consulting industries are going to emerge from this. Who will be able to afford the consulting industries in order to guide students through a process that, by the way, is already extraordinarily complex?

You add a whole other layer where now students might be negotiating, for example, with outside organizations so that they can benefit from their name, their image, so on and so forth, but also that, as colleges and universities begin to compete with each other and offer different incentives, you're probably going to have companies that are going to charge students a lot of money to navigate this process. I'm really deeply concerned about that.

It's interesting. I actually went to Martin Luther King High School right down the street from New York City, 4,000 kids in a building a long time ago. My high school counselor had 600 kids to her caseload. I think about those kids. Who is going to counsel and navigate these students through this complex admissions process that we created in the United States? Now adding this different layer to it, my worry is that the majority of students that are going to succeed in this process and be able to benefit from these new advantages that athletes will have, are actually going to be students who are already wealthy.

Brian Lehrer: I'll tell the listeners that you have a long history of experience in college admissions as the former vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College in Connecticut. From the vantage point of that experience, I wonder if you can lay out, related to your last answer, how the student-athlete admissions process is already different compared to a high schooler who might not be the captain of the football team, and if you see that changing already yet again, in response to this ruling.

Angel Pérez: I'm not sure that I see it changing, but I certainly do seeing see it being enhanced. The reality is that the majority of institutions, the athletes go through a different process, especially those institutions that are Division One and extremely competitive. Even at a Division Two or Division Three school, athletes usually first have contact with coaches before they even have contact with the admissions office. There usually is a process where coaches develop their idea of what their ideal team is going to be in the coming academic year. They go to the admissions office and say, "These are the students that we would really like to advocate for."

Now, it doesn't mean that it's an automatic admit, but the admission office certainly feels a tremendous amount of pressure to do that because, again, the bottom line is to win. A big piece of that has to do with the fact that that's pride for the institution that also brings in money through fundraising for alumni, so on and so forth. I do think though the incentivization is probably going to add a more complicated layer in the admissions process. I know that right now behind the scenes. This is all hot off the press, by the way. The Supreme Court ruling happened in June, the NCAA changed some of its guidelines in July. Colleges and universities are actually figuring this out as we're probably speaking, how are they going to change their process in order to accommodate these new rules?

Brian Lehrer: Amy in Maplewood you're on WNYC. Hi, Amy.

Amy: Hi, nice to speak with you. I'm a former college admissions counselor, currently [unintelligible 00:12:39], but I just want to say back even in the '80s and '90s, we were dealing with this pressure of, "Will you please consider admitting this student because we need a stellar quarterback or a guard on the basketball team?" I felt compromised at times, having to admit someone who I didn't feel academically could cut it, but who I was being told, "Sorry, you have to admit this person." This was a very small school, liberal arts school in New Jersey.

My comment to your guest is that even back then, we were seeing that a lot of the money to keep some of these kids in school who financially didn't have the resources, even then, though they might've been able to have the assets needed to play college athletics, and even to bring notoriety to the school, which is certainly what we were looking for in terms of branding and promotion, a lot of the financial support came from wealthy alumni, private donors. Having gone to an Ivy league school myself later, that's really a huge support for these athletes and it's going to continue to be even more important In my mind. Who are the successful graduates who are out there now in business who have a lot of money and who want to see the school continue to receive the prestige and the publicity that they think it should have? I think it's going to be private donors.

Brian Lehrer: Amy, who gets left out? Who gets disadvantaged by everything you've just described?

Amy: Well, the folks that played by the rules, sometimes the applicant who maybe has stellar grades and better SAT scores but they don't play a sport, they could be rejected from a school in favor of an athlete who-- In my case, if I think back, it still hurts to think that I had to admit a student that had below a C average when there was somebody else whose spot could have been taken by somebody who was academically more qualified. In the end, even then, sports is big business and it's going to continue to be, and that's the culture that we live in, in the United States. It's not going to go away.

Brian Lehrer: Amy, thank you for your call. Ellie in Astoria or you're on WNYC. Hi, Ellie.

Ellie: Hi, Brian. Nice to talk to you again. I actually called in before. I'm excited. I grew up in Texas in a town with a big state school. I hate college sports because when people say college sports, first of all, they think men sports. The reason that I wanted to call in is I was a theater major in college. I went to school on the East Coast. If we're going to start paying athletes or allowing them to receive compensation for doing something in an educational environment, so basically giving them compensation for professional work, then when are we going to start paying and allowing theater majors and music majors to receive compensation for the professional work that they are doing in the theater and the concert hall preparing for plays, production, and concerts?

Brian Lehrer: I think a lot of schools' answer to that question if they were speaking, honestly, would be, "We will do that when the concerts and plays and everything else that the music and theater majors are putting on makes as much money for the schools as we would pay you to do them."

Ellie: I understand the financial reasoning behind that, but all we're doing is perpetuating a lack of culture in the society by focusing so much on sports.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Ellie.

Ellie: It's a problem.

Brian Lehrer: It's a problem. Angel, anything you want to say in response to those two callers?

Angel Pérez: Yes, sure. First of all, it's wonderful to hear those perspectives and also even hear from a former admissions officer. The reality of the matter is, I agree that it certainly can be a really slippery slope. One of the challenges that I had as a former admission officer, I was an admissions officer for 22 years at several institutions across the country. Yes, I certainly felt an extraordinary amount of pressure from coaches to admit students who sometimes we felt weren't as competitive as others in the field.

I've always worked at highly selective institutions, but it really goes back to the mission of the institution, and also what are the goals of the institution? Higher education usually has an extraordinary amount of competing priorities that often conflict with each other. One of the priorities might be, "We want you to bring in the most diverse class ever, but we also want you to bring in the class with the highest GPA and highest test scores. Oh, but we also want to win."

By the way, I want to make clear that I also admitted thousands of athletes who were extraordinarily talented academically. These are not mutually exclusive, but yes, do we sometimes have to make sacrifices in admissions offices and admit students who maybe their academic qualifications are a little lower than others? I think that's where admission officers really struggle. I agree with your former guest, that I don't think that that is going to go away, If anything, the pressure there is going to grow.

Brian Lehrer: Is there the opportunity for more financial equity through this? For the students who already find it so difficult financially to attend college and student debt reached $1.7 trillion this past February, according to Forbes. Does this Supreme court decision mean more student-athletes might get an education who might not have otherwise?

Angel Pérez: Potentially. Honestly, I think it's probably still going to be a smaller number of students who are actually benefiting from this. You're not talking about hundreds of thousands of athletes. If I can go back to my former point about the consulting industries that are going to grow around this new ruling, that I worry that the students who are really going to take advantage of this might be students who actually are already wealthy.

The other concern, because one of your callers just mentioned fundraising, and I agree that a lot of the resources probably will come through fundraising. Having done fundraising in higher education myself and worked closely with the development office, I can tell you that the fundraising funnel at most institutions is limited. You're going to go to a donor and you might say, "Yes, please give us money for new incentives for our athletes," but you could have also asked that same donor for money for financial aid, for low-income students. You're not going to get both.

It is a trade-off and most institutions don't have an endless number of people that they can go to for philanthropy. My concern is, "What is the trade-off here?" Are the resources going to go to athletes or are they going to go to financial aid? They can't go to both. I actually think that we may not see more low-income students in the pipeline, and that's really the concern and why I was inspired to write the order.

Brian Lehrer: Marie in Massapequa, you're on WNYC. Hi, Marie?

Marie: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm a former professor. I stayed in the system for 20 years briefly full-time at a for profit. I've worked at some state universities and private. I actually support, let me just say, them paying particularly low-income student-athletes that are being taken advantage by these college systems with their massive media deals. What bothers me, and I'm waiting for the professor pushback on this, is many colleges across the United States are supported, which is why the free tuition thing is going to possibly go through, by 70%, part-time, adjunct, no benefits contingent worker.

Plus let's say the full-time professors that start off at semi prestigious universities with six-figure salaries, what happens when you get a student-athlete, that's going to max out at a million-dollar-plus deal? I'm not against that, but I know the college would say, "Well, our sports support our science programs and these programs and the theater programs." I'm just seeing a very big disadvantage for a lot of professors that have PhDs, a lot of degrees, spent a lot of money getting them, are experts in their fields and they will not be making the salaries that essentially these students have to get.

Brian Lehrer: The students are making. It's such an interesting point. Angel, have you thought about that? Some of the athletes at, it's obviously not going to be at every school, but at some schools where there's a lot of money in the sports program and a lot of public attention, some of the students might be making more than their professors. Isn't that weird?

Angel Pérez: It is. I will also remind you. By the way, I agree with our caller here, and certainly believe that adjuncts need even better rights in the higher education system. Remember that we already have a system where some coaches actually make more money than the presidents of the university who are managing extraordinarily complex organizations.

Brian Lehrer: Right. That's true.

Angel Pérez: Adding students to that mix certainly will be more complicated, but that system already exists and certainly, I would not call it fair.

Brian Lehrer: It's one thing just to say, "Okay, they're more valuable in the marketplace, so they're going to make more money than some of the professors." I think that the point that Marie's making that needs to be emphasized is, if there's only a finite amount of money in a school's budget, it's going to put even more downward pressure on the salaries of adjuncts and even full-time professors.

Angel Pérez: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: I guess we have to leave it there, with Angel Perez, Chief Executive Officer of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, and contributor to The Atlantic, where he wrote an article about this called The Perverse Consequences of the NCAA Ruling. Thank you so much for joining us.

Angel Pérez: Thanks for having me.

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