Opinion: Complete Carolina is a Band-Aid solution for systemic problems

The University’s new Complete Carolina program for athletes who have left the university to return and complete their degrees on the University’s dime is a fine program that addresses, on a local level, an injustice allowed by NCAA rules.

But implementing the program does little to wash away the school’s issues with athletics, which have the NCAA’s exploitative framework at their roots.

The program solves one of the most glaring injustices allowed by NCAA rules — the ability of schools to issue one-year scholarships to athletes and then decline to renew them at any time for any reason, regardless of the athlete’s performance in the classroom.

This system is one of the best examples of how athletes in revenue sports are valued by schools and the NCAA as profit-making commodities first and as students a distant second.

That UNC is guaranteeing its athletes a shot at an education as long as they maintain good academic standing is just and commendable.

The program has been criticized for favoring athletes instead of those who leave school for other, less lucrative reasons.

It would be excellent if other scholarships were extended in a similar fashion, but it does not make sense to begrudge athletes who benefit from this program — which is an effort to compensate for injuries and educational shortcomings in which their time at the University can be implicated.

The fundamental problem that allowed the NCAA to maintain the system that created the need for a program like Complete Carolina persists — NCAA athletes, who essentially behave as employees of the schools and the NCAA, are denied their right to bargain with schools for basic rights afforded to employees in any other profession such as benefits and pay.

Revenue college sports have developed to the point where any vision of a return to amateurism for the programs is pure fantasy. The athletes who play revenue sports are sufficiently talented and skilled that if they possessed comparable skills in any other field, they would be treated as what they essentially are — professionals.

NCAA revenue sports have become a billion-dollar industry, and denying any shares of the profits to the industry’s main attractions — its athletes — is absurd and unjust.

The tension between athletes’ statuses as professionally skilled individuals and NCAA rules designed to keep athletes from getting their proper share of the profits of the industry are at the root of the scandals UNC has faced for the past few years.

If UNC was able to acknowledge the reality of the situation within a revised NCAA framework, there would have been no need for fake classes and sketchy recruiting methods to stay competitive.

The recent decision by a federal judge in the Ed O’Bannon trial to allow athletes to share in the profits of the NCAA (even in a limited fashion) is just one sign that the tide has turned against the NCAA’s exploitative system. This issue will not be resolved until the NCAA grants athletes full rights to negotiate for themselves.

It’s time for UNC to acknowledge this reality. Complete Carolina is a commendable effort to do right by athletes within the current model. But it should also stop stalling the inevitable with patchwork solutions and lead the charge for complete NCAA reform.