Last updated on October 1, 2025
Out of every single college in every single country, not even one dares to classify their athletes as employees.
Why?
It’s a logistical and financial mess.
In fact, employing athletes could cost each school up to $200 million EVERY year—a 500% increase from the average school’s costs for sports of $40 million
Furthermore, sports programs are already too expensive. 98.6 percent of schools barely break even and more often than not, lose money.
Paying student athletes may be the right thing to do, but how financially feasible is it? Well, the money has to come from somewhere, and more likely than not colleges will have to make some sacrifices.
Program Cuts
Shocks to college finances would devastate sports programs that are not as nearly as popular such as basketball or football. Employing athletes could force 95% of colleges to cut most other sports programs.
Historically, budgetary concerns have sent colleges to cut these secondary sports first. Increased costs during COVID forced some colleges to cut close to 100 secondary sports programs like squash or gymnastics.
Fortunately, although collegiate sports may not be everybody’s career path, it certainly serves their long-term wellbeing. Given the lifelong skills that college athletics confer, such as team-building, leadership, and discipline, once in the workforce, athletes earned $10,000 more a year than other students.
But by making student athletes employees, many of the current 300 thousand collegiate athletes who participate in secondary sports, could instantly lose access to that beneficial athletic experience. Additionally, future students would never have the opportunity to use their athletic prowess and earn scholarships for niche sports like squash, that give them access to a college education in the first place.
Tuition Hikes
Even if cutting these secondary sports is enough for colleges, they might not stop there. Colleges are fundamentally businesses at heart, so the goal is not to provide the best education or experience, it’s to make as much money as possible.
Thus, some colleges find any excuse to continue hiking tuition even if it is unnecessary and irrational. In fact, some colleges used the recent inflation shocks to excessively raise tuition by 5%, which experts found was way more than what was needed to compensate for inflation.
Unfortunately, even these seemingly small increases in tuition are devastating, not only for student athletes, but for everybody on campus. Indeed, if tuition does go up by 5%, 17% of students would drop most of their classes and 6% would completely drop out. And for those left, they may even take out student loans, pinning them and their futures down.
At the end of the day, there is no question that student athletes should get paid, but we must consider the reality that it just might not be feasible for colleges. In an ideal world, colleges would have the money to support employing their student athletes – it’s simply the morally right thing to do.
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