Ministerial reports, media articles, and recent scientific works insist on the difficulties met by high-level sportsmen to succesfully complete a school education. A quantitative and qualitative research realized with elite sportsmen engaged in higher education at the Academy of Nantes invites nevertheless in the reconsideration of this alleged competition between sports and school projects. The analysis of the higher education outcomes of sports elites reveals socially typified sports, trajectories marked by the worlds of the sports, and different ways of meeting the demands of the sports. Visible effects in the entry when the specialists of the different disciplines massively turn to the same educational according to the matchings established locally between the agents of the sports institutions and institutions of higher education. Visible also when a career projection in men’s team sports compromises the pursuit of studies, or, on the contrary, when the strategies adjusted to the constraints of both sports and educational projects allow for the preservation of academic ambitions, or even open unexpected paths.
Keywords
- Higher Education
- sport
- elite sport
- student
- school success