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Notes -
To quote Heinlein:
"The United States had become a place where entertainers and professional athletes were mistaken for people of importance."
Trust me. There are similar reactions I've seen with students in the US. Not in athletics. But I've seen it quite a bit with computer science undergraduates, needing to take 'Anthropology' over something like studying for the A+ certification.
I think it probably owes more to incidental, historical path dependencies rather than a dedicated decision someone made, to see it intentionally end up that way. I could be wrong though.
Your sports club shouldn't come at the 'expense' of your college education. But it's ironic to see people say on the one hand that school didn't leave them prepared for what laid ahead after graduating, while treating the extracurriculars as unimportant. The latter is what I think is intended to supplement that more practical function that's needed. I personally hate extracurriculars as a program 'requirement'. That's putting the cart before the horse. But I can see a rationale for why it's there.
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