The Dispatch
Getting the ball rolling
Dive into the student athlete journey, flexible approaches and how institutions can facilitate better athletic and academic performance.
By Prisha Dandwani
"Being in an athlete bubble actually helped, I was surrounded by other student athletes who understood the demands of it."
“The sense of belonging and community that is fostered through sport can deeply enrich university life.”
In Brief
- Elite student athletes face immense scheduling and funding demands worldwide. Institutions are transforming support, through flexibility and investment, to ensure student success in both demanding athletic pathways and rigorous academics.
- Participation in university sports fosters vital life skills like resilience, goal management, and time management. Strong athletics programmes also significantly boost campus community, diversity, and positively correlate with higher student mental wellbeing scores.
- Institutions must prioritise investment in infrastructure, flexible academic environments, and high-quality coaching to support diverse athletes. A successful and resilient athletic cohort is a major asset to the university and its wider community.
The sports global market is currently valued at over US$400 billion, according to a report by consultancy, Kearney. Surprisingly, pursuing an athletic pathway does not seem to have the same appeal as getting into medicine, engineering or law.
Perhaps the potential risks outweigh the benefits, with issues such as injuries and possible retirement at a young age. However, things are not so black and white.
University sport programmes can look very different across continents. The United Kingdom and Australia have organisations such as the British Universities & Colleges Sport (BUCS) and Unisport respectively, which act as governing bodies for university sport. In the United States, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) serves as the largest governing body for college sport.
According to Sable International, an immigration consultancy, the US offers better value overall for student athletes due to more funding opportunities. However, British and Australian universities may provide students with more flexibility.
Making the cut
Careful selection is imperative since training to be an elite athlete is anything but glamorous. Students typically stretch out their days as much as their muscles will allow. Often, their schedule includes waking up at 5am, training till about 7am, attending lectures and classes, and then more training till evening. Afterward, there’s classwork, some leisure time and the need to get as much rest as possible for optimum performance.
QS Insights spoke with Camille Cheng, an Olympic swimmer in Hong Kong. With an accomplished swimming background, she is now utilising her experience alongside her degree in psychology as the Co-Founder of a mental health charity, Mind the Waves.
While traditional paths of entry into university as an athlete involve advanced recruitment, Cheng’s story deviates slightly from the norm. With a penchant for the water from a young age, swimming came naturally to her. She chose to attend the University of California, Berkeley largely because of their academic reputation and swimming opportunities.
“I wasn’t pushed hard as a kid to train. One of the disadvantages of growing up in Beijing is that I didn’t know much about the US collegiate system and didn’t go through the process that most swimmers wanted to compete go through.”
Surprisingly, this Olympic swimmer arrived at Berkeley without being previously recruited or selected to the swimming team. “I was considered a walk-on [a student who joins a university team without a scholarship] to the swimming team,” she says as she reflects on how her competitive swimming journey began. “I’ve been able to cultivate who I am besides just a swimmer,” she says. Many of the questions she receives are less focussed on how she became a fast swimmer and more on balancing time between academics and sport.
She describes her years at university as her most formative. “Being in an athlete bubble actually helped, I was surrounded by other student athletes who understood the demands of it and we spent many weekends competing and travelling. The men's and women’s swim teams were not integrated and my female coach saw herself more as an educator, creating focus and support.
“I can’t really comment on the non-athlete experience. I had a few friends who finished their eligibility with swimming but had not yet graduated so experienced life as a non-athlete and shared just how different it is; you have so much more time.”
This raises the issue of what universities can do to support the balancing act that student athletes have to manage and whether more flexibility is required, without compromising academic standards. Additionally, since student athletes have limited time to seek part-time work, increased funding support becomes an important issue.
Camille Cheng representing Hong Kong.
The power of the institution
Philip Wood is the Scholarship and Recruitment Manager in Sports at University of Nottingham in the UK. Since joining the university as a Development Officer in 2012, he says the institution has undergone an incredible transformation.
“In 2012 we had only one national championship and eight medals. A colleague and I spent about one and a half to two years looking at how things were being done, re-evaluating the coaching staff and creating constitutions for the programme to be recalibrated,” he tells QS Insights.
With the willingness from the university to let their development officers restructure key areas, Wood was given time and room for the overhaul required.
“To get great athletes, you need great coaches. We also began international recruitment in 2014 and started bringing in students for sport, which worked well because University of Nottingham has a strong academic reputation.
“Each year that we grew the international cohort, it allowed us to expand our teams and raise the bar for domestic athletes.”
Everything came together at the right time in this success story. With investment in infrastructure, better staff, academic prowess, high quality facilities and the completion of the David Ross Sports Village in 2016, the University of Nottingham enhanced its reputation to be named Sports University of the Year three times since 2018, according to The Times and the Sunday Times Good University Guide.
Do what matters to you
To do what you love is one of those phrases repeated incessantly. Although echoed through numerous success stories, such as Camille Cheng’s, it is a whole other ballgame to live it since it often requires a different level of courage with more at stake.
“Well, I just love sports,” Wood says.
He reflects on his educational background at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, where he was given a strong platform to play American football and practise Taekwondo. From there, he found belonging in university sport circles.
The journey took him to coaching American football, then to one of his most rewarding periods of work at the British Olympic Association before the University of Nottingham. Due to his breadth of experience, Wood now assists athletes in several sports, ranging from badminton to rugby.
Other universities, such as Cardiff University, also implement High Performance Programmes that allow students to balance their academic and athletic interests. Ayesha Garvey, a Physiotherapist and Surfer, says she was drawn to study there as it allowed her to practice surfing while learning about physiotherapy.
“The feeling of being in the ocean, for me, is like coming home. The commitment I have for both [surfing and physiotherapy] motivates me to work hard.” The combination of her interests work well together, with her athletic experience deepening her understanding of how to help people in her line of work.
Cheng speaking onstage.
Get more than a ‘kick’ out of it
The sense of belonging and community that is fostered through sport can deeply enrich university life. Wood strongly emphasises this as being one of the main benefits of a strong athletics programme. When the sporting departments improved reputations, academics began to embrace more sport. Students and staff show up for matches and tournaments, creating a sense of camaraderie.
“You also see greater diversity in the classroom, with students from different backgrounds and different walks of life,” he adds.
Jessica Zeitler, an Instructional Designer at the US’ University of Arizona, who was once a collegiate runner, dives into how versatile and useful an athletic mindset is.
Athletic training and academic success can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Both complement each other. Zeitler highlights factors such as motivation, dedication and fortitude. It is about focusing on a clear goal, committed practice and developing the resilience to bounce back.
“As instructional designers, educators and administrators, it’s our responsibility to take into account diverse student demographics and create learning environments that resonate.”
Whether it’s bouncing back from an injury or a poor grade, learning about harnessing teammates’ strengths in a group presentation or in a football team, there are shared lessons.
Participation in sport also has a significant impact on graduate employability. In a paper written by Griffiths, Bullough et al, findings revealed that sport added value beyond subject-specific qualifications, especially when it came to important life skills such as goal management and time-management skills.
Sweat it out
With more attention paid to wellbeing over the past decade, there is increased focus on student quality of life. Numerous studies have shown strong correlations between participation in sport and increased mental health.
According to a report by Sport England, the number of people playing sport or engaging in physical activity is at its highest level on record (as of April 2025). People are proactively engaging in activities that boost their wellbeing and productivity.
Cheng noted that she too has noticed more people developing an interest in sports and greater respect for athletes.
“When regular people experience the benefits and demands of physical activity for themselves, they perhaps realise or have more empathy for what it must be like to do this on an elite-level while dealing with other commitments. They are also more willing to discuss issues around mental health and wellbeing,” she acknowledges.
In a 2024 survey of 7,740 students by BUCS, respondents who were not active had lower personal wellbeing scores. Using the Shortened Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale, studies showed active respondents had the highest score in mental well-being (with scores of 23.96 out of 35), while inactive respondents had the lowest (22.71).
It would appear to be a worthwhile investment to boost sport and wellbeing facilities across campuses. A successful and resilient cohort that comprises of professional athletes and staff, as well as students who can choose to participate, can be a huge asset to the institution and their wider communities.