On the Tampa Bay Ray's rookie ball team, Stone is only one of a few athletes who is college educated. MLB has recognized the low percentage of degrees among their athletes at the professional level, and partnered with Northeastern University in June to address the problem. The partnership was created so the university could offer programs that are tailored specifically toward athletes at any point in their baseball career.
Michaela Duffy, a director of strategic initiatives at Northeastern, works directly with the MLB to create programs that help both major and minor baseball players earn their degree while still pursuing their sport.
"Our programs aim to help learners wherever they are in their lifetime," Duffy said, "especially for professional athletes where their attention is divided between their job and school."
For athletes involved with the MLB, Northeastern offers both online and hybrid classes that are tailored toward the student’s needs. There are over 200 certificates and a wide range of degrees available in the program, most of which can be completed remotely.
Over the few months that the university has held this partnership, Duffy has found that working with professional baseball players requires more work than creating schedules. She says there is a deeply rooted negative ideology surrounding education in the league. "In MLB, the culture of even talking about education immediately connotates failure," Duffy said.
She added that there is a large stigma surrounding education in baseball that stretches back to the beginning of the organization. Players often have to choose one path or the other, and don’t have the opportunity to excel in both. For most players, discussing a degree with a coach typically means that their future in baseball is probably reaching an end.
While the average MLB player is a millennial at 28.4 years old, a group which holds the most degrees amongst all other generations, this segment of millennials is less educated in comparison. With such a large group of individuals without degrees, the terms "degree" and "college education" are, in turn, associated with a negative connotation.
"Education isn't really promoted," Stone said. "They take guys out of high school and don't really explain that they'll probably never end up making it to the MLB or getting a degree. The two don't coexist together."
In order to begin changing the culture surrounding education in the MLB, programs like the one at Northeastern are working from the bottom up.
"Our pitch to MLB was that we understand your players and the levels of complexity and noise that is in their ecosystem because of education," Duffy said. "We want to completely flip the model in terms of how we talk to them about education.
In their program, Duffy tries to not mention the word "education" when talking to potential baseball students. Instead, she describes the program as a professional opportunity.
Another factor that both Northeastern and the MLB are dealing with includes the large number of players from other countries that do not speak English who sign a professional contract every year.
Although they sign outside of the First-Player draft, players from other countries can be selected as free agents after they are 17 years old. According to the MLB Racial and Gender Report Card, 34.5 percent of opening day rosters included players born outside of the United States, more than any other previous year for the sport.
At the top of the list, the Dominican Republic sends more players to the major leagues than any other country outside of the United States. Many of these foreign players face a language barrier in the U.S., and have not been exposed to the American education system. Northeastern is working to help these players through English as a Second Language programs that help players who are new to the country.
"Our measure of success will be how much we can make an impact around the conversation about education and degree attainment and enrollment. We'll judge it by how many of their athletes become our students," Duffy said.
By offering education opportunities that work with athlete schedules, Duffy and the Northeastern staff are working to close the education gap between other professional sports and create a positive connotation around the word.
One factor that adds to the negative attitude towards education is the draft. While there have been several changes to the MLB Draft over the years, it officially began in 1947 as a way to fairly divide talented young athletes among professional clubs. Today, the draft takes place over three days. Exactly 40 rounds of baseball players are selected from high schools and colleges around the U.S. The players who are drafted enter the minor league system and progress from there, although only about 10 percent will ever make it the major leagues.
During the draft, many high school athletes are selected every year and begin their professional career instead of continuing on to college. According to a study done by Richard Karcher, a former minor league player and professor at Eastern Michigan, there is more of an incentive for baseball players to forgo their education and pursue a professional career than any other sport.
"A large number of baseball players, whether they're coming out of high school, junior college or college, get paid more than in any other sport to give it a shot," said Karcher.
In the NFL, Karcher found, almost half of the players on the field have a college degree. Unlike football players who must wait until their junior year of college to be drafted by a professional team, baseball players can be drafted as 18 years olds and must make the choice between an education and their passion. The first overall pick of the 2017 draft, Royce Lewis, was a recent JSerra High graduate decided to negin his professional career after being offered $6.7 million.
While over 300 high school players were selected in the 2017 draft, Karcher found that, statistically, it is less likely for them to make it to the MLB over college players. Despite the statistics, the incentive of a signing bonus combined with the ability to start a career as a professional baseball player entices athletes to leave their education behind.
Karcher's own son was drafted in 2017, and made the decision to put his college degree on hold to join the Cincinnati Reds.
"In baseball there are very few senior-signees who make it to 25-man rosters," Karcher said. "Contrast that with the large number of players on NFL rosters who were graduating seniors. MLB makes the opportunity in the sport more enticing than education."
As a senior signee himself, Jake Stone is very rare in the world of baseball.
"There were a few guys on my team that have their degree, but most of the guys I know don’t have more than a few semesters under their belt," Stone said.
Despite the negative ideas surrounding the word, having a degree could help give many athletes comfort in knowing they have another option if baseball does not work out, Stone said. Stone felt that having a degree and being able to chase his baseball dreams puts him in a favorable position. He hit over .300 in his first season in the Gulf Coast League for the Rays, and is already training to prepare for his next season.
"Having a degree means everything to me," Stone said. "It takes pressure off of me to be great or over excel in the sport because I have something to fall back on. In the back of my mind I can think about that and relax when I take the field."
