Money Well Spent...?

As we get closer finishing our high school careers and shipping off to college, students' dreams of playing sports at the colligate level are within reach. But half the battle of earning that scholarship is the work you put in the classroom, hence the title student-athlete. Academics are even more important for Division III scholarships where the market for sports isn't as big, and where the schools are mostly private and want to maintain a high standard for academics.
As much as we would like to believe that being a student-athlete stays true to its title, more and more investigations are proving that the balance of sports and studies isn't exactly equivalent. The University of North Carolina, praised for its dominant and historic basketball program, is one of the schools under investigation. Here at New Trier, we all love test scores, so I'll give you some: 34 basketball and football players were admitted into the school with SAT scores lower than 400 and ACT not reaching 16 (CNN). It's sort of cringing to think that there are kids from low-income families who have the grades to get into college and could really use the scholarship money, but instead its given to athletes who might end up leaving school after a year to play professionally. Chicago Bulls point-guard Derrick Rose didn't even take his own ACT, but managed to earn a full scholarship to the University of Memphis. Rose left after one season to play in the NBA.
To most Americans, a good education is the path to a better life. Yet we are cheating ourselves and deserving students the access to that education when we let sports and entertainment override our values.

What do think about these scholarships? What can be done to change this?