Careers of European Athletes: Who is Ultimately Responsible?

The compatibility of sport and professional careers has significantly deteriorated in recent years. While athlete's dual careers have been well researched from the athletes' perspective, comparatively little attention has been paid to the benefits offering specific sport science study programmes by universities to high performance athletes (HPA). As this chapter will show, HPAs have few advantageous skills and experiences that are especially functional for jobs in sport or related to sport. Universities with sport science degree programmes could offer great opportunities for elite athletes. However, several challenges are associated with university careers, which requires the cooperation between universities, politics and sport federations. Instead of customising existing programmes to meet the specific needs of HPAs, it would be useful to potentially develop tailor made study programmes in sports science based on the specific needs of HPAs.