The entire US "college sports" nonsense is completely separable and unnecessary to tertiary education.
As is the "4 year college experience" nonsense that has students travelling "away from home for the first time".
It's entirely a US-based dysfunctional system.
The problem with tertiary education is that it is now considered "necessary" for most employment, so therefore what used to be research institutions are now considered just an extension of secondary education.
But at the same time, the research aspect of university, being a repository of knowledge and of learning has been reduced by academic beancounters to literally counting names on papers in journals.
Tertiary undergraduate degrees are entirely vocational and should be taught that way. No one expects senior high school teachers to also "publish or perish" or be responsible for bringing grants and income into the high school.
If I'm hiring someone in my field (IT) I literally don't care if they have done a post graduate degree. Completing an MSc or PhD or equivalent adds nothing to the characteristics I want in an IT employee.
The same applies to pharmacists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, art curators, librarians, accountants, marketers, etc, etc. They are all vocations and require the same sort of training structure that applies to plumbers and electricians and plasterers and roof installers.
If someone wants to be a physicist or chemist, or a computer scientist, or a mathematician, or an art historian, or other actual "liberal arts and sciences" role, then that should be an undergraduate degree in "researcher" along with the fundamentals of their chosen art/science field.
And to get back to the original point about college sports, if someone wants to be a professional sportsperson, then that is again a vocational degree with a specialization.
As is the "4 year college experience" nonsense that has students travelling "away from home for the first time".
It's entirely a US-based dysfunctional system.
The problem with tertiary education is that it is now considered "necessary" for most employment, so therefore what used to be research institutions are now considered just an extension of secondary education.
But at the same time, the research aspect of university, being a repository of knowledge and of learning has been reduced by academic beancounters to literally counting names on papers in journals.
Tertiary undergraduate degrees are entirely vocational and should be taught that way. No one expects senior high school teachers to also "publish or perish" or be responsible for bringing grants and income into the high school.
If I'm hiring someone in my field (IT) I literally don't care if they have done a post graduate degree. Completing an MSc or PhD or equivalent adds nothing to the characteristics I want in an IT employee.
The same applies to pharmacists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, art curators, librarians, accountants, marketers, etc, etc. They are all vocations and require the same sort of training structure that applies to plumbers and electricians and plasterers and roof installers.
If someone wants to be a physicist or chemist, or a computer scientist, or a mathematician, or an art historian, or other actual "liberal arts and sciences" role, then that should be an undergraduate degree in "researcher" along with the fundamentals of their chosen art/science field.
And to get back to the original point about college sports, if someone wants to be a professional sportsperson, then that is again a vocational degree with a specialization.