Best Practices in Higher Education Graduate Programs: Preparing the Next Generation of Intercollegiate Athletics Administrators

The commercialization of intercollegiate athletics since the turn of the 21st century has led to an increasingly prevalent view of college athletics as “Big-Time Sport” business enterprises [Bowen, W. G., & Levin, S. A. (2011). Reclaiming the game: College sports and educational values . Princeton, NJ: University Press;  Croissant, J. L. (2001). Can this campus be bought? Commercial influence in unfamiliar places. Academe , 87 (5), 44–48; Lapchick, R. E. (2006). New game plan for college sport . Westport: Praeger; Sperber, M. (2000). Beer and circus: How big-time college sports has crippled undergraduate education . New York, NY: Macmillan.]. While college athletics often are associated with this big-business mentality in the media, the placement of intercollegiate athletics is fundamentally a functional unit nested within higher education institutions. To this end, the 21st century has marked a significant shift in the preparation patterns of intercollegiate athletic practitioners with programs that take a more holistic approach with curricula that encompass knowledge of higher education systems. This manuscript examines the career preparation patterns and graduate school experiences of aspiring intercollegiate athletic practitioners. Framed from a constructivist approach, this presentation draws from Kolb's [(1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall] Experiential Learning Theory to understand what contemporary professionals who aspire to work in intercollegiate athletics value in graduate preparation programs. This pilot study draws on the voices and narratives of graduate students who are currently completing athletic administration training, nested within higher education programs. Implications and recommendations are provided to inform and enhance graduate level preparation programs.