That's amazing. And in the end, a lot of kids get cheated.
Back in the '70s, I taught part time at Boston College for a few years. There weren't many art history majors, and department chair didn't make much of an effort to push for new ones, so most of my students were kids fulfilling their distribution requirements.
As midterms approached, I told the class they could study with the help of slides; the slide room would be open specific late afternoons for about two weeks leading up to the exam. (Not the best way to do things, but it was how they did it.) One of the guys, Bruce, approached me after class. He asked me to come in and open the slide room on a Saturday or Sunday; he couldn't come in the afternoons because he had baseball practice.
I pointed out that he'd cut my class a number of times. Surely he could cut practice once or twice. He was astonished by this suggestion. I told him to have a talk with his coach. I also pointed out that while I realized he wanted to be a professional baseball player, and that I wished him the best, making the pros is very difficult. So while he was in college, he'd do well to learn something.
He wasn't an idiot, so things probably worked out for him, though he never became a pro ball player. Others weren't, and still aren't, so lucky.
