In my college career I've noticed something that seems a little backwards.
When you apply for college, often a major factor in your decision is how much (or how little) scholarship money you receive. Those scholarships are often based on your scholastic achievement in high school, your scores on standardized test like the SAT, or your financial need.
All that is good and fine, and I understand colleges' motivation for throwing money at students in an attempt to attract higher qualified students. It is never a bad thing for colleges to strive to improve their student bodies. However, my problem rests on the issue for those students who are already in college who did not receive those scholarships out of high school.
Similarly, in the National Football League student-athletes entering the NFL draft are awarded with extremely large contracts with no proven NFL experience. For example, Matt Ryan, the current Atlanta Falcons quarterback, received a 6 year $72 million dollar contract with $34.75 million guaranteed. NFL rookies are given their huge contracts based off of things like their stats in college, and their potential for success in the NFL.
I find these two situations eerily similar.
Colleges that give lots of their scholarship money to incoming freshman are much more reluctant to offer money to their current students, regardless of their success. Oftentimes it doesn't matter how well students do during their college career, because the money that students who deserve scholarships for their collegiate scholastic achievements has already been divvied out to students who have never taken a college class.
NFL teams that give their rookies millions of dollars have less money under the current salary cap rules to give money to the other 45-50 veterans on the team. The majority of veterans make significantly less money than those players who have never played a snap in the NFL.
These systems seem to be at least to a certain extent backwards. To me it seems like at least scholarships should be offered equally if not more to students who attend colleges and universities and succeed while they are there. There should be a better balance between incoming freshman scholarships and current student scholarships.
Similarly, rookies entering the NFL draft should not be compensated more than a veteran player who has played 10 years in the league.
Methods like this don't exist in the business world. People applying for their first job don't make more money then a high executive who has been working for the company for ten years. Why should it be the case with these two cases?
