Redesigning U.S. Intercollegiate Athletics to Better Conform with UNESCO’s Best Practices in Student Affairs

This paper calls for the massive redesign of U.S. intercollegiate athletics departments in light of their widespread and fundamental failure to serve a bona fide student affairs mission. Part I of this article discusses the general purpose of student affairs departments within the broader context of higher education, and it begins to explore the view of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) about how collegiate athletics should fit within the general framework of student affairs. Part II analyzes the success (or lack thereof) of the U.S. version of college athletics under UNESCO’s general principles for evaluating student affairs departments. Part III evaluates U.S. collegiate athletics departments based on UNESCO sports-specific criteria.Finally, Part IV proposes a reasonable means to reform intercollegiate sports in the United States. Specifically, the proposal calls for a bifurcated reform of collegiate sports in the U.S., with a small number of revenue-generating colleges, in a small number of sports, adopting a commercial sports business model, and the overwhelming remainder of colleges adopting a non-commercial model that conforms to the principles of student affairs advocated by UNESCO