Public and Private Institutions in Athletics

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Institution

Public and Private Institutions in AthleticsThe public institutional colleges operate under the control of a state or the local governments. These colleges receive a considerable amount of their budget from the state or the public funding. The private colleges do not receive direct funding from the state and are controlled by the board of trustees’ members. It is incredibly conflicting in the way the public institutions are viewed compared to the private institutions, especially for the athletes. The dream of most young athletes is to play in college one day. They believe that the college would become the gate pass of becoming professionals. For the students to accomplish this dream, they need college scouts to watch them play in their favorite sports which is vital (Yeung, 2015).

Both the athletes at the private and public institutions put more effort to achieve their dreams; conversely, they will win a different kind of attention. An athlete who is at the individual institution will receive a lot of attention compared to the athlete in the public institution. For example, the Miami Herald once hosted the All Broward-Banquet, and the top athletes from each district attended it. However, more than three-quarter of the total athletes from the private institutions were recognized winners. Also, the most prominent award was awarded to a student from a private institution (G & Wafer, 2015). The main reasons as to why the individual schools outshined the public schools is because the private schools are capable of finding and attracting the best coaches and scouts, they can pay fans of the game to come and watch and also they can live stream the games which they play.

Most of the public institutional colleges do not have the mandate to award scholarships as they need to put money in other areas thus this discourages the talented athletes to find greener pastures. The students at the private schools typically have to pay a certain amount of funds which contribute to the athletics resources. The money provided and the resources obtained helps the individual institutions to attract the best college scouts to coach them. The private schools have a benefit because due to this money they can get the best players from anywhere. This motivates the other athletes by surrounding them with better players which makes them feel like superior players. This is to say that the public school players have a disadvantage in that they do not get an equal amount of resources compared to the private schools (Yeung, R, 2015).

Recently the private institutions are dominating the public ones in athletics as they are showing dominance in most of the sports. The main reason has to be funding. Private institutions can get money from wealthy donors, and they use that money towards athletics improvements. Furthermore, the individual institutions have a great alumni base with rich traditions. Therefore, they do not struggle very much with getting funding for their athletic programs because they get support budget from the alumni independent source. This depicts that the athletes in private colleges are well and better skilled. It is expensive paying for games and parents who can send their children to private colleges are also able to afford to spend money on their children to play on special teams which helps them improve their skills.

Majority of private school are in influential organizations as they need to compete and top against the public schools in the athletic programs. Therefore, they spend most of time and resources training with the other private schools to finally offer a significant challenge to the public schools. Another issue in the athletics in both private and public institutions is the classification. Private schools are generally complicated to classify. The public schools are grouped to compete with schools of their enrollment size, and it is quite difficult to rank the private schools that generally have few enrollments but quite good athletic programs. The successes by the individual institutions commonly lead to disagreements and raising eyebrows (Pryor et al., 2015). They are often accused of recruiting athletes who are prohibited by the authorities. However, these accusations mostly tend to be difficult to prove.

In conclusion, it is good to say that the private institutions have an added advantage over the public institutions in athletics. It is sure that this progress is brought about by money because inopportunely money is what leads a team to the top. There is no doubt that the private schools outshine the public schools in championships. Most states are trying to carve out the private schools that don’t use the location-based enrollment into their playoff systems. This system brings frustrations to the private institutional colleges. This makes them feel as if it is a punishment for their continued success. The public institutional colleges also feel frustrated as they usually think the private institutions are using underhand methods for their success. What makes these public institutions feel agitated is watching the same teams win in championships like every year. There are those who urge separating the public schools from the private schools in athletics could water down the competition. I believe that this will not be the solution because it might lead the more top athletes looking for the private institutional colleges that have high- level athletic programs and infrastructure.

References

Lincove, J. A., Cowen, J. M., & Imbrogno, J. P. (2018). What’s in Your Portfolio? How Parents Rank Traditional Public, Private, and Charter Schools in Post-Katrina New Orleans’ Citywide System of School Choice. Education Finance and Policy, 13(2), 194-226.

Pryor, R. R., Casa, D. J., Vandermark, L. W., Stearns, R. L., Attanasio, S. M., Fontaine, G. J., & Wafer, A. M. (2015). Athletic training services in public secondary schools: a benchmark study. Journal of athletic training, 50(2), 156-162.

Yeung, R. (2015). Athletics, athletic leadership, and academic achievement. Education and Urban Society, 47(3), 361-387.