02-13-2022, 12:00 PM
If the argument is "If a football student-athlete is an employee, then so is a field hockey student-athlete", then isn't is also, "If a Division I field hockey student-athlete is an employee, then so is a Division III field hockey student-athlete."?
What is a ballpark of the minimum a college would have to spend for an athlete as an employee? It depends upon the hours worked, weeks worked, minimum wage, legally required other benefits, and administrative costs (more HR staff, payroll, lawyers).
I think minimum wage is around $15/hour. I'd guess between 2 and 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, 6 months a year. Call it 150 days, so 300-600 hours. So ballpark $5K-10K in benefits&administrative. For a 100-person football team, that's $0.5M - $1M + benefits. For a 10-person small team, that's $50K - $100K.
I imagine that some of the players in the law suit are thinking of 6 or 7 figure salaries and signing bonuses, rather than minimum wage.
A deep-pocket school might be able to absorb/redistribute that additional expense. Some/many schools probably can't.
It would seem unfair to charge more tuition to the paying students to cover the cost of wages & benefits to their non-paying classmates (but schools already do that for the lost tuition of the non-paying classmates). If the schools reduced expenses elsewhere (say, benefits to teachers, campus improvements, reduced research efforts), the effect would be an overall reduction in the value of the education for all students. Perhaps the most equitable cost reduction would be to reduce benefits to the athletes, such as the quantity/quality of meals or hotels. Indeed, I can imagine that the amount spent per week for the football team's food would require most of their wages to pay for it.
While I was looking for the number of athletes, or scholarship athletes at Stanford, I ran across this fact.
Presumably 68 offers didn't go out at the same time!
What is a ballpark of the minimum a college would have to spend for an athlete as an employee? It depends upon the hours worked, weeks worked, minimum wage, legally required other benefits, and administrative costs (more HR staff, payroll, lawyers).
I think minimum wage is around $15/hour. I'd guess between 2 and 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, 6 months a year. Call it 150 days, so 300-600 hours. So ballpark $5K-10K in benefits&administrative. For a 100-person football team, that's $0.5M - $1M + benefits. For a 10-person small team, that's $50K - $100K.
I imagine that some of the players in the law suit are thinking of 6 or 7 figure salaries and signing bonuses, rather than minimum wage.
A deep-pocket school might be able to absorb/redistribute that additional expense. Some/many schools probably can't.
It would seem unfair to charge more tuition to the paying students to cover the cost of wages & benefits to their non-paying classmates (but schools already do that for the lost tuition of the non-paying classmates). If the schools reduced expenses elsewhere (say, benefits to teachers, campus improvements, reduced research efforts), the effect would be an overall reduction in the value of the education for all students. Perhaps the most equitable cost reduction would be to reduce benefits to the athletes, such as the quantity/quality of meals or hotels. Indeed, I can imagine that the amount spent per week for the football team's food would require most of their wages to pay for it.
While I was looking for the number of athletes, or scholarship athletes at Stanford, I ran across this fact.
Quote:During the past year [2020-2021], some 68 students were given football scholarship offers to study at Stanford. Sixteen of the students chose Stanford. Of the 52 who did not, 27 began their college careers in January at another school.
Presumably 68 offers didn't go out at the same time!