Do we have to accept the status quo in college sports? Today’s status quo is to provide scholarships to academically unqualified students and support them with heavy-handed tutoring, easy majors, and even “no show” classes to keep them eligible. Yet many fail to graduate or graduate with meaningless degrees.

Jenna A. Robinson has combed through three documents that attempt to address those problems. They are the Knight Commission report of 2010, the 2013 Hunter Rawlings panel report on UNC-Chapel Hill, and the standing recommendations of the Drake Group, a national association of faculty trying to change college athletics.

The pickings for genuine reform are slim, but Robinson dissects the proposals: the pointless, the promising, and the should-be-tried. As for the last category, they would improve the situation but, as she points out, “universities must find the political will to implement them.”