“Mens sana in corpore sano” wrote Latin poet Juvenal over two thousand years ago. This theory of a sound mind in a sound body has found a practical application in many colleges in the US, where the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) regulates 89 different national championships yearly, with beach volleyball waiting to make its first appearance as an official NCAA sport in 2016.
Being a student-athlete requires a lot of effort and discipline to meet both academic and athletic goals. During the season they practice often twice a day starting early in the morning before they head to class and go back to another session in the afternoon. Keeping up with all the classes can be challenging, especially in some moments of the year where competitions are held far away from campus and students have to study whenever they’re free, either on the plane, at the airport or on the bus.
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This is where a new venture called StudySoup believes it can help. StudySoup users can upload whatever they consider a useful learning tool on the StudySoup Marketplace (study guides, notes, presentations), where other students can buy the material, granting those diligent students an income.
This also allows note takers to receive higher grades; requiring constant dedication, this turned out to be a great way to study and many students saw their GPAs rising even after a single semester. For the teams who qualified for the college football playoffs, StudySoup offered the Athletic Departments of those schools free access to the online material to make it available for the players, making sure they had enough time to practice without worrying too much about academics. The news spread quickly among other students as well. Currently the four schools who made it to the final stage (Clemson, Michigan State, Alabama, Oklahoma) have more than 6,500 students using this online platform.
Leonard Lodish, an emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School said of StudySoup, “I, for one, am not a good note taker myself, so I would have loved to share someone else’s notes that were better than mine,” Lodish said. “What happens, I think, is a better educational process because the notes are better and the really good note takers get better grades because they take better notes and they’re also able to add to their income to defray some college costs.”
Knowing that their finals went well, we can catch the live action from the field starting on December 31st as the four teams play in the Orange Bowl (Oklahoma and Clemson) and Cotton Bowl (Michigan State and Alabama) to qualify for the final, that will be played at the University of Phoenix on January 11th.