An analysis of the academic measures that allow student athletes to combine tertiary education and elite sport

This article uses an explorative and descriptive approach to analyze the academic measures that currently allow university students to combine their studies with the practice of elite sports. It proposes that these measures will only be reasonable and practicable if they are subject to a process of political reflection that ensure their appropriacy and if they are informed by a series of recommendations for the families of students negotiating dual career paths in university education and elite sport (the true social commitment the present document demands). To achieve this, the paper uses a qualitative method based on the current legal principles regulating tertiary education and sport and approaches the question of academic measures from two different angles: horizontally, comparing the degree of congruence in laws regulating education and laws regulating sport; and vertically, reviewing the different educational levels of the system to identify how academic measures change with student age as university degree courses and sport training programmes demand increasing levels of time and commitment. The results clearly support the thesis that the emerging legal framework for this student group is still not fully developed and reveal that individual student cases are generally difficult to understand in their totality. The normative character of the laws regulating education and sport differs, with the result that student-athletes constitute a multifaceted group which can be subdivided according to sporting level.