Two-Year Ball vs. Four-Year
The Reality of the Student-Athlete
When the Friday Night Lights dim for the last time on a high school senior, thoughts of what happens next become overwhelming. From a young age, you may have dreamed of playing a sport at the big name university your family supports throughout the year. However, If you are part of the more than 99-percent of student-athletes in America's high schools who will never play Division I athletics at a big name university, you may quickly shift your gears down the two-year college path.
For 18 years, every day has been laid out in front of you. You have had chores to complete, homework to finish, friends to visit, family events to attend, and often times a part-time job to earn extra money.
Well, in 2011, odds are good that jobs are exactly what some in your family are finding very hard to come by. Skyrocketing unemployment numbers may have made it next to impossible for you to even get an entry-level job at neighborhood stores. That means many people have less cash at their fingertips than they did just one year ago.
The pressure on your wallet, and your family's bank account, has a gorilla grip on your cash. As a result, your plans of pursuing a degree and a student-athletic program at a four-year university may be adjusting accordingly. As it is across most of the country, two-year colleges are watching their enrollment skyrocket! In turn, these career-oriented institutions of higher learning are adjusting to meet the needs of its students, including the student-athlete.
Lottery programs in many states offer assistance to the incoming college student. Some states offer specific lottery-based grants that are only redeemable at a two-year college or "technical" college. A big goal of the technical college is to not only help encourage job growth in their region, but to arm its students with skill sets and experience that will be useful in the local, as well as the national, job market.
Eighty-percent of recent college graduates stated in a new poll that they had recently moved back in with their parents for various amounts of time after receiving their four-year degree. Known as the "Boomerang Generation" because of their return home, today's four-year college graduates are finding that getting their first job in the field of their choice is extremely difficult.
However, the life of a two-year college student-athlete has them in a position, which is leaving them with more money, more athletic opportunities, and more real-life career choices within reach in their own backyard, as well as throughout the nation.
Since 2000, two-year colleges have experienced a growing trend of high schoolers jumping right into their student-athletics. From Men's Basketball to Women's Volleyball and everything in between, the two-year student-athlete scene in the United States has boomed to unimaginable heights.
"Our goal is unlike most collegiate athletic organizations," says David Stephenson, a two-year college athletic association commissioner,. "We aren't out to create NBA superstars. We are building future leaders of our communities. Concentrating on the growth and success of students in our own backyards, while giving the student-athletes a competitive forum, is the ambition of the member colleges."
The majority of college student-athlete scholarships awarded in 2011 will barely be enough to pay for fees and books at many institutions. For most two-year colleges, its students in need will see a majority, if not all, of their tuition and fees paid in full by way of state assistance. Be sure to speak with your high school guidance counselor for more information on the two-year colleges in your region.
Something to keep in mind if you are hoping to push towards a career and play collegiate sports while you do it, is that many two-year colleges offer a much more successful placement rate of their graduates. This means that the odds are extremely high that you will take a career opportunity that seemed out of reach just two years prior to graduation.
More than half a million student-athletes compete in some level of collegiate athletics each year in the United States. "Whatever helps one more student get their foot in the door and headed towards a goal is huge," said Stephenson. "Odds are very high that no one on this level will be playing professional sports in the future. However, they are putting themselves in the driver's seat for a career that seemed beyond their wildest dreams just a year ago."
Editorial provided by Don Foley, Office of Sports Information and Social Media, Georgia Northwestern Technical College.
