If you are a softball fan, you know that the college world series was held a couple of weeks ago in Oklahoma City. If you are not a softball fan, the college world series was held a couple of weeks ago in Oklahoma City.
The tournament attracted a record number of TV viewers and featured several compelling storylines. The University of Texas won its first national championship, ending the four-year championship run by the University of Oklahoma. The Sooners didn’t go easily. Down to their final strike in an elimination game against Texas Tech, their number nine hitter hit a dramatic game-tying home run, only to see Texas Tech score the winning run in the bottom of the seventh.
Texas Tech’s ascendence was the big story line in the tournament, showing that the changing landscape of intercollegiate sports have, depending on your viewpoint, either embraced or infected college softball. On the very night that Texas claimed the championship, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken signed off on a settlement allowing colleges to pay athletes directly (since 2021 college athletes have had the ability to be paid by third-party entities for use of their names, images, and likenesses, or NIL). Under the terms of the new settlement, colleges will be able to pay up to a total of $20.5 million to athletes over the next year, with the amount increasing in future years.
As someone who has always been a college sports fan, I have to admit that the new world of intercollegiate athletics has diminished my interest. It’s not the money. I don’t object to college athletes being paid, given the time they put into their sports and the revenue they produce for universities and others.
I am far more bothered by conference realignment that results in there being 18 schools in the Big Ten conference and Cal and Stanford being part of the Atlantic Coast conference, and also by the transfer portal that has become a form of free agency for college athletes. 2700 men’s basketball players entered the transfer portal this off-season, nearly half of all D1 players, and it is not uncommon to hear of players competing for their third or even fourth different institutions. I’m a former college professor and coach and believe that athletics provide a classroom, but it’s hard to imagine that the transfer portal has enhanced the educational experience for college athletes. Perhaps it’s time to discard the fiction of the student-athlete and admit that college athletes are employees within the advancement arm of colleges and universities. But that’s a discussion for another time.
Back to softball. Texas Tech’s emergence in a single year as a softball powerhouse after never before having made the World Series was built on the back of a new coach and a large number of transfers, the most prominent of which was star pitcher NiJaree Canady. Canady transferred to Texas Tech from Stanford, where she had been the 2024 national player of the year, after becoming college softball’s first recipient of a million-dollar NIL deal. Many observers believe that NiJaree Canaday could become softball’s equivalent of Caitlin Clark, drawing a new generation of fans to the sport.
A recent article in The Athletic detailed the recruiting process that led Canady from Stanford to Texas Tech. As is often the case (maybe “sometimes” is more accurate), the comments were more interesting than the article itself. What caught my eye was a question raised by several different commenters, a question that leads to one of the great debates within college admission.
Was Canady foolish, even misguided, to give up the opportunity for a Stanford diploma as opposed to one from Texas Tech? Several commenters were incredulous that she would have even considered that, Others pointed out that, if she ultimately wanted a Stanford degree, she could go to Stanford for graduate school and that her million dollar deal from Texas Tech would cover the cost very nicely.
Answering that question requires answering a broader question about what is most important about a college education. There are two schools of thought, or what philosophers call “world-views.” World views are grounded in a combination of fact and faith.
In one corner we have what might be called the “Prestige” world-view. That school of thought sees the value of college as deriving from the name on the diploma. The “best” college is the one that is most prestigious, and prestige is often correlated with selectivity, wanting us to believe that the harder a place is to get in, the better it must be. In the prestige world-view, college choice is objective, with the U.S. News college rankings serving as its bible.
The alternative is what might be called the “Fit” world-view. For those of us who believe in fit, what is most important about college is not the name on the diploma, but rather the college experience one has. The fit world-view sees college choice as subjective and personal. What is right for me may not be right for you.
The prestige world-view is based on the assumption that there is a secret sauce in attending a prestigious college, an added value that improves an individual’s likelihood of success after college. A simplistic framing of the Stanford vs. Texas Tech question could lead to a conclusion that NiJaree Canady should have stayed at Stanford.
But it is not that simple. The argument for added value from prestige is based on studies from researchers like Caroline Hoxby and Raj Chetty showing an earnings differential for those who graduated from prestigious institutions. But differences in earnings are related more to what one majors in than where one goes to college. I don’t know what Canady is majoring in, but engineering graduates from Texas Tech will in most cases earn more than Art History or Philosophy majors from Stanford do.
That ignores a more important question. Are earnings a proxy for success? If a college or university produced an uncommon number of teachers or Peace Corps volunteers rather than investment bankers and consultants, would the lower earnings mean that the college or its graduates were less successful? Do we use earnings as a metric of success because they measure what we value, or do we value them because they are easy to measure?
There are two other issues to consider here. One is the million-dollar deal Canady received from Texas Tech. Even if Stanford graduates earn more than Texas Tech graduates over their lifetimes, is the difference one million dollars? Aren’t NIL deals a form of merit scholarship, designed to entice students who otherwise wouldn’t consider a particular place?
The other was pointed out by another commenter on The Athletic article. Canady’s success is driven not by going to Stanford, but rather by being talented enough to have been admitted to Stanford. That is the argument made in several studies done by Alan Krueger and Stacy Dale. They matched students who had attended a prestigious college with those possessing similar credentials who were admitted but attended public flagship universities instead., and concluded that “It’s not U., it’s me” that leads to success.
In terms of Canady’s college experience, at least on the softball field, it’s hard to parse the difference between the two schools. At both she led her team to the college world series, but Texas Tech made it to the final game. At Stanford, Canady was the national player of the year, whereas this year she was a finalist for the award but didn’t win. We can assume that she has no regrets about the decision to switch, because she is returning to Texas Tech for another season (and another million-dollar deal).
It should be her call, because she will be the one living with the consequences of the decision. Let’s hope her choice is about fit rather than about the money.