College basketball less relevant at NBA Draft but exploitive as ever
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By DERON SNYDER (as published by theGrio)
Attending college doesn’t mean what it used to mean, when ancestors were denied the opportunity but considered higher education the ultimate goal for future generations.
Get off the farm, don’t ply the trade, quit working with your hands. Turn in those dusty clothes for a white-collar shirt after crossing the stage with your bachelor’s degree. That’s the path to expand your mind and achieve upward mobility, economically and socially.
Now, the entire world is a click away for anyone inclined to expand their horizons. If desired, you can become enlightened while skipping college and avoiding student loans, instead opting for skilled labor or other jobs that pay OK but don’t require a bachelor’s.
But the romance of college remains strong as ever around sports programs, especially the big-banking, money-making duo of basketball and football.
Alums love to root for their alma maters in primetime battles on national TV. But overall, degrees don’t hit for recent teens like they used to hit for us. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the decline in college attendance since 2018 is the steepest on record, with help from the pandemic.
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