The point that you are missing, IMHO, is that to get your analogy synched up with @Whack-a-Mole 's question is that we have to rephrase it. We have to say that your former tech companies are part of the National Technology Union (NTU) which they are effectively required to join and that as part of the rules of being a member of NTU, the NTU requires all tech employees for all member companies to take and pass a course in Underwater Basket Weaving 101.
You and your fellow employees argue that the Underwater Basket Weaving class is a restraint of trade because you have no choice but to submit to the NTU’s demands to work in your present field and that the existing rule provides no benefit to the field except to extend the NTU’s monopoly power.
There are some professions where continuing education with minimum performance ratings are required and if you don’t meet those criteria you DO get fired. Medicine, for example - there are quite a few areas where continuing education is required. Aviation - pilots are required to under regular training and if they don’t meet performance objectives they’re out of a job.
So there is precedent for requiring training and performance.
The only question is how that reasoning would apply to college athletes.
Right and I agree. Same thing with lawyers. It makes sense to say that you have to take continuing education to keep up with the latest in your field.
But if your job is getting paid $1 million for playing football, it seems hard to justify that you need to get that C in history class to keep your job.
It’s no more silly than, say, barristers in England being required to wear wigs. Or requiring airline pilots to wear a company uniform. Companies can require employees to do things that actually aren’t entirely relevant to the main job. Not sure how you’d justify it. Maybe say the student athletes are representatives of the university and take classes to be an integrated part of it. Or something. Hey, I’m not the one who’s the lawyer here.
Or… any professional athlete’s career is limited. Football, due to the intense physical stresses endured, tends to be particularly short. Maybe it could be justified by the rationale that an education will give the student-athlete a means to make a living after their athletic career is over. Instead of re-training after that job ends they are educated so they can transition more smoothly post-athletics. Instead of a 401(k) they get a degree (or maybe both at some future point in time).
Much like requiring ties in the office, those examples seem to be fairly harmless and de minimis sorts of regulations that don’t really harm anyone even if they serve no purpose (I mean, what does a tie do to help you with your job?).
But if we are going to treat student-athletes as market participants then what you propose would be a pretty unique and paternalistic requirement. I mean, maybe the tech field will change in a few years, so you better study up on being a dental hygienist, just in case.
I don’t disagree with your concerns, and it makes me start to backtrack on my initial support of the ruling. For most of the guys that don’t make the NFL, the college system at least gives them a free education, debt free, that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. This ruling may untether that whole system.
The education attached to college football is not trivial. Sure, we’ve all heard of the stereotype of the dumb jock helped to barely pass his classes, but the two former college football players I’ve known who went to college on football scholarships were both really smart guys (one is deceased, one still alive). Both were working class/borderline poor to start, one had a solid middle-class life and earned enough to send all of his kids to college, the other is now a multi-millionaire and setting up inheritance for his kids. Their college scholarships didn’t just benefit them, it’s resulted in multi-generational wealth. If they hadn’t gotten degrees they wouldn’t have built that security and wealth and their own kids wouldn’t have been as well educated. Certainly for poor kids getting an athletic scholarship can be like winning the lottery.
Can be. None of that is guaranteed. That is also the problem. There are also examples of college athletes whose lives wound up in a terrible place.
Even so, one reason why kids sports have become so competitive now is the pursuit of athletic scholarships. In the vast majority of cases none of those kids have any intention of pursing a professional sports career after college - just not much call for volleyball or track-and-field post college - that scholarship is a means of getting an actual education. Granted, those aren’t the big draw sports, either. But most college football or basketball players aren’t going to make the pros, either, there is an awareness that you’d better get your education while your sports are paying for it.
It is different that law or medicine or aviation or a lot of other fields that combine education and work.
The former Big Ten football player I know who is still around is interesting to discuss these issues with. He had a full ride scholarship for football, but he’ll tell you the downsides to the system that he’s benefited from a great deal.
Especially these days the debt free aspect of getting educated would be an enormous leg up to the student athletes who can get such scholarships