Smith Athletics boasts a mission committed to “prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion” for both student-athletes and staff, but behind the scenes, Smith College Athletic Department is dependent on the unpaid labor of the graduate student assistant coaches.
The graduate students concurrently take classes to receive their masters degree in Exercise and Sports Science (ESS) and gain coaching experience in the field with one of Smith’s 11 varsity athletics teams or the Strength and Conditioning and Athletic Training departments.
With a steep tuition cost of $46,820 per academic year for the two-year program, without housing or meal stipends, the program requires a level of financial support that is inaccessible to many potential candidates. This has been an ongoing topic of concern for students, as the program description states it was founded on the principle of getting more women and individuals with other marginalized identities into coaching and sport administrative positions, but the lack of funding is contradictory to this mission.
The graduate assistant coaches (GAs) receive three to four credits per semester for coaching rather than being paid for their work. On top of their coaching commitment, they also take a course load equivalent to that of a full-time undergraduate student. Since one credit hour is equivalent to three hours of work for the week, the coaches get compensated with credit hours for 12-16 hours of work per week under this system. However, most sports meet at least six times per week for upwards of three hours per day, not including travel time for competitions. This has the coaches working 18 hours per week at a minimum, without factoring in recruiting responsibilities, administrative tasks, individual meetings with athletes and other tasks designated by their head coach.
Many GAs recognized this discrepancy and are attempting to communicate how this uncompensated labor is a burden not only on their own lives, but also limits what they can contribute to the program.
One cross country and track and field graduate assistant coach, who has chosen to remain anonymous, was a three-season student-athlete during their time at Smith and now is in their second year of the program. They began tracking their coaching hours during J-Term to present to the department.
The GA reported that they worked fewer hours than usual over J-Term because there were limited competitions over the break, yet they still clocked 25-30 hours per week.
“It feels hard for me to track.” the GA said. “There are so many moments where I’m in between classes and I come down and do something for 45 minutes, or it’s a Sunday afternoon, and next thing I know, I did something for an hour and a half, but it’s kind of in my free time.”
They stated that due to the immense time commitment, “Unfortunately coaching is the priority and the academics come secondary. I’m not able to bring my best self to the classroom because I need to do that at practice and meets or otherwise I’m letting other people down.”
This GA is in-season year-round, serving as assistant coach for both cross country and track. This year, they are the only GA coaching the distance team, which they attribute to the falling numbers in graduate applications since their time as a student-athlete. Due to the lack of GAs and other paid coaching positions, they are also the new throwing coach for track, which is exciting for them, but also requires a greater time commitment.
“You’re used to filling a certain gap for the program which can be an exciting learning opportunity, but it’s not really accounted for. We’re not paid to be in that leadership role,” they said.
“The school’s identity is as an undergraduate institution, and because of that, the grad students are often overlooked. We are treated like students when it’s convenient and financially profitable for the school and we’re treated like staff when it’s convenient or more financially profitable…we’re never included in bonuses during the holidays or during the COVID-19 pandemic or receive meal plans or housing, so it’s just really contradictory all the time.”
They also noted that since the graduate assistants are younger and some of them are also student-athletes, the students lean on them more for mental health support.
They said, “I know as a student-athlete, we lean on the GAs at certain times as crutches or as people we trust to handle really serious personal information. I’ve now been in the position where I’ve had serious conversations with people before that are confidential or aren’t wanted to get back to the head coach. We’re holding space for a lot of things at the same time, we’re told we are and should be acting like full-time assistant coaching, but aren’t getting that compensation.”
They reflected on their experiences’ relationship to the mission of the program; “As coaches, we’re in a position of power, and it’s our responsibility to open doors for other people to access that level of power, and I think it’s really hypocritical that that’s what we’re learning and we’re in a program that was founded on the principle of opening doors for women to get into coaching, yet isn’t really able to keep up with that demand by even giving people a livable wage at a minimum.”
“Coaching is an underpaid position already. It’s not setting us up for success in the future career if we’re already going into debt and tapping into savings at such a young age when we’re working as much as we are,” they continued.
In addition to coaching and academics, each student is required to teach one one-credit course per semester to keep the ESS program running. They receive a stipend for their work as professors. Up until the fall 2023 semester, GAs were also required to fulfill a certain level of work hours at home games or in other building administration tasks such as 70 hours per year and at least one three hour shift in the equipment booth completely uncompensated. This requirement has now been altered so the number of hours is up to the student and they receive minimum wage for this work.
One of the strength and conditioning coaches (who has also chosen to remain anonymous) spoke on the inherent flaws of the stipend. They said, “The biggest thing I think that we’ve felt a struggle with in the last year or two is the lack of transparency. Each of us gets a different stipend, which is odd because we’re all teaching the same amount of classes. What we were told was if you have two GAs, your sport is allotted $14,000 or $12,000 to split, which is why I was told I was getting $6,000 per year instead of the full $12,000 because we have two GAs in strength and conditioning. I’ve since come to find out that even sports with one GA are sometimes still getting $6,000 and some sports that have two GAs are each getting $12,000 or $14,000, so it’s not transparent, and we can’t figure out why they’re getting paid more.”
The coach said that the lack of transparency is likely a result of the multifaceted nature of the athletics department. “Part of the issue,” they explained, “is that it’s categorized under so many different organizations within Smith like athletics and the graduate program; we can’t figure out who to ask and how to get a straight answer from anyone about where our money actually comes from or what we’re being paid for”.
The coach said that while they didn’t want to expose which sports were getting paid more, they stated that some sports are helping their GAs make up the difference in pay through sports camps or other fundraisers organized by the sport’s head coaches.
This coach reported having to work as a personal trainer outside of the program, and stated, “Most people I know work outside hours of their coaching and teaching to make some extra money to be able to afford rent and food.”
But even this extra work is not enough, they said. “Currently the funding process for our program is very exclusionary. Anyone who comes from a lower income background probably could not afford the program on their own. I grew up low-income, and my family has very fortunately had a shift in our finances…so they’ve been able to support me, but I’ve often recognized that if we had the finances right now that my family had in high school, I never would have been able to do this program.”
They expressed that while they are grateful to have the opportunity to have an outside job to pay for the program, the time commitment reduces their ability to best serve their athletes. “Whenever I’m taking extra time to personal train to make extra money for myself I am taking some time away from my coaching hours.”
The GAs, in a presentation to the department, calculated, by converting their hours worked to minimum wage in Northampton ($14/hour), that each GA is contributing around $320,000 worth of work per year for the college and, on average, is receiving a stipend of $6,000 in addition to paying $5,000 per year out-of-pocket (after financial aid and scholarships).
They are proposing to the department, “a model that requires no tuition money and rewards all students with a $10,000 fellowship, regardless of outside duties performed. Additional money could be offered to students who are able to teach courses and/or who need additional funding to attend the program. We will also make more effort to provide supports such as meals on campus, information on local affordable housing options, accessing EBT and applying for appropriate loans.”
This is not unreasonable in comparison to other comparable liberal arts institutions. They reported in their presentation that, “NESCAC schools pay an average of 25 assistant coaches on women’s teams $14,000 each. NEWMAC schools pay an average of 18 assistant coaches $9,000 each.”
Overall, the program has been widely successful at setting up students with coaching jobs at prestigious institutions directly after graduation, including Brown University, Columbia University, Harvard University and many more. However, the GAs claim that in order for the program to continue its mission of increasing diversity in coaching and sports leadership positions, their labor for the department and the college must be adequately compensated.
