argumentative essay about television educational value

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Television has a negative influence on kids and should be limited

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Studies Support Benefits of Educational TV for Reading

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Even the harshest critics of the role that television plays in children’s lives would have a hard time arguing that Elmo and Big Bird are bad for youngsters. From the earliest days of “Sesame Street” nearly four decades ago, educational television has earned high praise and millions of fans for entertaining and educating young children.

Now, a new generation of programs, and a rigorous research effort to test its impact, is adding to the “Sesame Street” legacy and working to clarify for parents the potential benefits of television viewing, particularly for literacy development.

While learning experts surely agree that too much television and inappropriate content can have detrimental effects on children, the right kinds of programs can set them on the path toward reading.

“I’m a big supporter of media technology and I do agree that kids spend far too much time with television and other media,” said Milton Chen, who in the mid-1990s helped launch the Ready to Learn Service , a partnership between the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, and the U.S. Department of Education to create educational programming. “But I come out on the side that specific television programs and experiences can very much support literacy.”

Well-designed programs can teach distinct skills such as letter and sound recognition, as well as cultivate a love of reading, said Mr. Chen, the director of the George Lucas Educational Foundation in San Rafael, Calif. As the director of research earlier in his career for the Children’s Television Workshop, which has since been renamed Sesame Workshop, Mr. Chen helped to design and test some of the lessons embedded in programs like “Sesame Street” and “The Electric Company.”

Gains in Understanding

Literacy has been a dominant theme of public-television programs since the first episodes of “Sesame Street” pioneered the genre in November 1969.

Many parents since then have observed firsthand the effectiveness of those lessons, such as one on “Sesame Street” that featured Y as the letter of the day and was accompanied by Grammy winner Norah Jones singing her song, “Don’t Know Why.” Or when Synonym Sam, the girl genius character on “Between the Lions,” demonstrated the meaning of sets of words like “walk,” “strut,” and “stride.”

There is now growing empirical evidence that such carefully crafted segments deliver an academic punch.

A federally financed study released last month, for example, found that “WordWorld,” a program funded under the Ready to Learn initiative, helps preschool children learn oral vocabulary and featured words.

“Between the Lions,” hosted by a puppet family of lions who live in the New York City Library, has been studied even more extensively. Studies on the 10-year-old program have linked it to significant gains in students’ understanding of how letters combine to make words, as well as of the purpose of the printed word.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has recognized that some television programming has benefits. But the Elk Grove Village, Ill.-based organization urges parents to avoid television viewing altogether for children under age 2, a prime audience for many programs, because it may be detrimental to their brain development.

The academy also points to the potential for television in general to send the wrong messages about violence, drug use, and other negative behaviors, as well as its documented role in promoting sedentary behavior that can lead to childhood obesity.

The Ready to Learn initiative, begun in 1995, set new priorities for children’s television several years ago, requiring that new programs receiving public funding home in on early literacy. At least a quarter of federal grant money for the programs must be used for research to drive their design and gauge whether the lessons in the programs affect children’s literacy development.

That research is now emerging and providing critical information on the most effective approaches to infusing learning into television programming, according to Deborah L. Linebarger, the director of the Children and Media Lab at the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

“We know that we can successfully merge learning and appeal to children, but it takes work,” said Ms. Linebarger, who is studying the impact of several popular shows on public television, including “Between the Lions” and “Super Why!”

The best programs, she said, create content that reflects research on how children learn and test it out on children prior to putting it on television. While public television tends to dominate the educational market, she said that the cable stations Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel have also found success in promoting children’s learning on shows such as “Blues Clues” and “Little Einsteins.”

“When they do these things and kids understand them and like them, the shows are really successful,” Ms. Linebarger said, adding that the commercial success can often underwrite the costly development process.

‘Literacy 360 Approach’

Even as children become more accustomed to different kinds of media, from computer games to interactive Web sites, children’s television has held a large and steady audience, experts say. The newer programs, and even those now heading into middle age, are adapting their approach to engage the digital generation. Most of the shows have accompanying Web sites that provide video clips, activities, and related lessons and games.

“Television, particularly for preschoolers and the early grades, is still king,” said Michael H. Levine, the executive director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, which promotes research and best practices about digital learning for young children. “But now everything needs to be developed for a range of different platforms.”

The Sesame Street site, for example, provides podcasts with vocabulary lessons and information related to a selected word, such as “dog.” A video clip is offered as well, with former “Late Night” talk-show host Conan O’Brien explaining interesting facts about dogs.

“They are taking a literacy 360 approach and surrounding kids with learning opportunities,” Ms. Linebarger said.

Those resources help to broaden the impact of the programs and provide learning opportunities beyond the television hour, she added.

With a range of activities, and even some aligned assessment tools, parents and caregivers can use educational programming more formally to teach children, experts say. A summer camp was launched last year in association with the “Super Why!” program on PBS and will be offered around the country this year.

PBS is reaching out to parents and caregivers through social-networking tools, such as Twitter, to provide reminders and daily strategies for nurturing language development and background knowledge, precursors to reading. Public-television officials are also devising initiatives to train early-childhood professionals to use educational television and other digital media to promote learning goals.

Detrimental Effects?

Parents and caregivers, however, need to be aware of the darker side of television, some experts say, particularly in light of data suggesting that children’s daily media exposure can exceed the amount of time they spend in school.

“It would seem that viewing of age-appropriate educational programming in the preschool years is positively associated with reading,” Marie Evans Schmidt, a research associate at the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital in Boston, wrote in an e-mail. “But there may be some detrimental effects of TV viewing in general (total hours viewed) for slightly older children who are learning to read.

The thought is that watching TV may displace reading practice, which of course affects whether and how soon children become fluent readers.”

That’s why television focused on learning is a valuable asset worthy of public support, said Susan T. Zellman, the vice president for education and children’s content at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit organization established by Congress that underwrites public television and radio services.

“These characters are engaging, and the kids are drawn into [lessons] by the characters and the stories, so you motivate them to learn,” she said. “Educational television is so powerful and the research is so compelling.”

A version of this article appeared in the March 04, 2009 edition of Education Week as Studies Support Benefits of Educational TV for Reading

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The upside to educational television

This week, a new, large study describes the upside of educational television. Economists from Wellesley College and the University of Maryland used information about television signals in the 1960s to examine the differences in access to Sesame Street among preschool children.

They found that young children with greater access to the show were more likely to be working at the grade level appropriate for their age.

Boys and black, non-Hispanic  children experienced the largest benefits from watching the program. Living in an area with strong television reception for Sesame Street reduced the likelihood of falling behind academically by 16 percent for boys and by 13.7 percent for black children.

“It is remarkable that a single intervention consisting of watching a television show for an hour a day in preschool can have such a substantial effect helping kids advance through school,” study lead author Philip Levine explained. ” Our analysis suggests that Sesame Street may be the biggest and most affordable early childhood intervention out there, at a cost of a just few dollars per child per year, with benefits that can last several years.”

While the study certainly applies to modern society, it’s important to note there was far less programming for children when Sesame Street began in 1969. So children who watched television were most likely to view it. Today, the wide variety of options can lead children and parents to chose shows with less educational value.

The take-home message: Television can provide an important educational benefit to children, provided they are watching an educational show.

Does youtube count as education too? My kids learn a lot from all the science-channels on there!

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Television Effects on Education, Revisited

Impaired learning to learn.

Posted July 17, 2012

When television first became popular around 1950, it was dominated by such shows as the Milton Berle comedy hour, “I Love Lucy,” and professional wrestling. Those who missed out on the halcyon days of early television might enjoy reading about its history .

The potential for a damaging impact on education was recognized at the outset. In 1950 Boston University's President Dr. Daniel L. Marsh warned that “if the [television] craze continues with the present level of programs, we are destined to have a nation of morons.” Well here we are. Just look at how voters re-elect incompetents, panderers, and demagogues.

Quick to jump into the breach anticipated by the brain-eating monster of TV, a new movement of “educational TV” sprang up . National Educational Television was born on May 16, 1954 and was a non-profit effort to bring educational programs to the masses. The network was not sustainable as such and was transformed into the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in October, 1970, which continues to the present. Many of the stations are university affiliates that have in modern times made some attempts at education, but the programming now is devoted largely to music and news. In the early days, if you got up at five AM you might learn a foreign language or something else educationally useful. I remember around 1965 seeing my 5-year-old son looking at test patterns and then a college physics course, while waiting for the cartoons to come on. I’m sure he didn’t learn much physics. Today, educational efforts can still be found on television, but most such programming is distributed over the Internet.

I, among numerous others, am most concerned about how television affects childhood brain development and capability for learning. It steals time away from doing things, such as interacting with others and playing with objects. Language and communication abilities are stunted because TV communication is unidirectional. Kids don’t generate communication, they just receive it. The Raise Smart Kid website cites scholarly reports showing that TV viewing takes away time from reading and improving reading skills through practice. Kids watching cartoons and entertainment television during pre-school years have poorer pre-reading skills at age 5.

The corrosive nature of television’s effect on childhood intellect has only grown in recent years. The Online College Course’s website has a telling info-graphic titled “ This is your child’s brain on television .” Can you believe it―by the age of three, 1/3 of children have a TV in their room. The average child watches 1500 hours of TV a year, but only goes to school 900 hours a year. Only a few of the shows that young children watch have much educational value. There are a few exceptions: Sesame Street and Mr. Robert’s Neighborhood got 5-apple ratings for educational usefulness. But a lot of the other stuff is just plain junk. Moreover, a lot of what kids see is not age appropriate, commonly with sex and violence.

The website points out some of the deleterious effects on attitudes and behavior when young children spend too much time watching television. I want to focus on two issues related to learning to learn. One area of concern is learning to read. Reading, for those who do it well, is the most efficient way to learn. But kids these days tend not to read well. Many don’t want to read, and they were probably conditioned that way by watching too much television. TV is the easy way to get information: you don’t have to do anything―just sit there like a lump and watch.

A study reviewed in the Huffington Post revealed that American high-school students, when they do read, read books that are at the fifth grade level. Of the top 40 books teens in grades 9-12 are reading in school, the average reading level of that list is grade 5.3. Another study established that 67% of U.S. students are reading below grade level. I know these are real problems. I interact with dozens of teachers at professional development workshops , and every teacher I have asked say their students are two or more years behind grade level.

The other problem that nobody seems to talk much about is the learning passivity imposed by television. Young people are being conditioned, much like Pavlov’s dogs, to be passive learners. Learning how to learn well requires active engagement. Good learners must train themselves to generate and sustain interest, to pay attention , to grapple with ideas, and integrate knowledge into ever-evolving learning styles and thinking schema. Reading does that. Good learners do things with their learning: they grow the depth of understanding, they hone creativity skills. “Hands-on” learning activities can help young people develop such skills, although “minds-on” activities are much better. In any case, promoting such skills is something that TV, even educational TV, does rather poorly.

So the next time you get up in arms about our failing schools, remember that a childhood filled with TV is probably a big part of the problem.

My new book, Memory Power 101 can be ordered now. It should be at your Barnes and Noble bookstore or you can order online . Power-packed with 298 pages of information, it’s a great bargain for only $14.95.

William Klemm , Ph.D ., is a senior professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University.

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Essay on Television for Students and Children

500+ words essay on television.

Television is one of the most popular devices that are used for entertainment all over the world. It has become quite common nowadays and almost every household has one television set at their place. In the beginning, we see how it was referred to as the ‘idiot box.’ This was mostly so because back in those days, it was all about entertainment. It did not have that many informative channels as it does now.

Moreover, with this invention, the craze attracted many people to spend all their time watching TV. People started considering it harmful as it attracted the kids the most. In other words, kids spent most of their time watching television and not studying. However, as times passed, the channels of television changed. More and more channels were broadcasted with different specialties. Thus, it gave us knowledge too along with entertainment.

Benefits of Watching Television

The invention of television gave us various benefits. It was helpful in providing the common man with a cheap mode of entertainment. As they are very affordable, everyone can now own television and get access to entertainment.

In addition, it keeps us updated on the latest happenings of the world. It is now possible to get news from the other corner of the world. Similarly, television also offers educational programs that enhance our knowledge about science and wildlife and more.

Moreover, television also motivates individuals to develop skills. They also have various programs showing speeches of motivational speakers. This pushes people to do better. You can also say that television widens the exposure we get. It increases our knowledge about several sports, national events and more.

While television comes with a lot of benefits, it also has a negative side. Television is corrupting the mind of the youth and we will further discuss how.

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How Television is    Harming the Youth

Additionally, it also makes people addict. People get addicted to their TV’s and avoid social interaction. This impacts their social life as they spend their time in their rooms all alone. This addiction also makes them vulnerable and they take their programs too seriously.

The most dangerous of all is the fake information that circulates on news channels and more. Many media channels are now only promoting the propaganda of the governments and misinforming citizens. This makes causes a lot of division within the otherwise peaceful community of our country.

Thus, it is extremely important to keep the TV watching in check. Parents must limit the time of their children watching TV and encouraging them to indulge in outdoor games. As for the parents, we should not believe everything on the TV to be true. We must be the better judge of the situation and act wisely without any influence.

{ “@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “FAQPage”, “mainEntity”: [{ “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “How does television benefit people?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”: “Television offers people a cheap source of entertainment. It saves them from boredom and helps them get information and knowledge about worldly affairs.” } }, { “@type”: “Question”, “name”: “What is the negative side of television?”, “acceptedAnswer”: { “@type”: “Answer”, “text”:”Television has a negative side to it because it harms people’s health when watched in excess. Moreover, it is the easiest platform to spread fake news and create misunderstandings between communities and destroy the peace and harmony of the country.”} }] }

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Home ⇛ neu school of graduate studies research journal ⇛ vol. 1 no. 1 (2013), television: its effects and implications to children’s learning: an argumentative essay.

Sally M. Lopez

Discipline: Media

The first category involved hypotheses that show negative effects on development in school, particularly reading, which was named as “Inhibition Hypotheses”. Under this category are Displacement hypothesis (TV viewing displaces reading time), Passivity hypothesis (low level of mental effort children usually invest in watching TV may lead to reduced effort when learning to read or write), Concentration Deterioration hypothesis (the fast pace and rapid context changes in TV programs may negatively affect children’s ability to concentrate on a given task) and Reading Depreciation hypothesis (children’s pleasant experiences with TV will reduce their motivation to invest energy in school contexts).   On the other hand, the second category showed the benefits of TV viewing particularly facilitating children’s reading development. The two hypotheses under the second category are called “Facilitation Hypothesis”. These hypotheses are Book-Reading Promotion hypothesis (children may want to read books about TV programs that they enjoyed watching) and On-screen Reading hypothesis (children’s reading skills, in particular reading speed, improve as a result of reading subtitles in TV programs).

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Media — Television Negative Effects On Society

Television Negative Effects on Society

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Published: Mar 13, 2024

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Argumentative Essay: Getting a Good Education

Getting an education is compulsory in the developed world, but so many of us don’t appreciate it enough. We should value our education a lot more and work harder, because it is compulsory for so many different reasons and adds so much value to our lives. There are so many positive outcomes of education, but most of them come under the two banners of allowing us to develop personally, and improving our life chances.

Learning gives us so much that we otherwise wouldn’t have. Besides the obvious skills and facts that we learn, we learn self-discipline and self-motivation, timekeeping skills, social and communication skills and so much more. We also gain confidence and self-esteem through completing tasks and being praised for good work, as well as learning right and wrong as we are punished for any wrongdoing from a young age. Being educated is shown to increase people’s sense of self-worth, life satisfaction and overall happiness, so ultimately being a well-rounded person with lots of potential of happiness is a major outcome of education.

This development in itself increases our chances in life and our potential to do the things we want to do, as social skills gained allow us to form good relationships, and all of the other skills will help when it comes to getting a job. There is, unsurprisingly, a positive correlation between the level of education that people receive and the amount of money they earn. People that are educated are less likely to be unemployed or be on low wages with which they can barely feed their families. They are more likely to afford a nice house in a good area, a nice car, and regular family vacations. Educated people are also less likely to go to prison, because they will be able to provide for their families without crime and are less likely to be violent as they can communicate better with language.

Getting a good high school education also improves our chances of being able to go to college . This further study adds so many different skills to your arsenal that employment prospects and earning potential become better again. Whatever level someone has studied to though, a good education will get them further than someone with little or no education.

This is because of the marketable skills that they have gained. Literacy and basic math skills are at the foundation of independent living and being able to work. Good communication skills and ability to work both with a team and independently are often a basic requirement for any job, and these are developed in the education system through group and individual projects. All in all, education gives us so many skills that it is necessary for both happiness and success in life.

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Ted Cruz Has Some Strong Opinions About College Sports

By Jane Coaston

Ms. Coaston is a contributing writer to Opinion.

College sports bring in billions of dollars in revenue every year, but until very recently virtually none of it went to athletes. In 2021, the Supreme Court ruled in N.C.A.A. v. Alston that student athletes should be able to profit from their names, images or likenesses, known as NIL. As Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted in a concurring opinion, the N.C.A.A.’s policies against permitting athletes to profit from their labor could be considered a violation of antitrust laws, writing, “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair-market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair-market rate.” Since then, in practice, NIL has included two common types of compensation: endorsement deals for athletes, but also more direct payments, which usually come from college-affiliated collectives supported by donors in exchange for appearances at events, social media posts or other promotion.

But some coaches and observers have raised concerns about players participating in a potential Wild West of big paydays and constant transfers that could put smaller programs at risk. The N.C.A.A. has also agreed to a settlement that likely will eventually result in billions of dollars going to athletes who sued over not receiving compensation for NIL use on television, and in the start of a revenue-sharing model that would, in the future, pay athletes directly. That settlement, which is not yet finalized, will likely change college sports, but many questions about the details of that future remain unclear .

Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican, has been trying to help create a solution for college sports. I spoke with him about why he believes preserving competitiveness in college sports is a job for the federal government. “Well, there’s a difference between a conservative and an anarchist,” he told me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity and is part of an Opinion Q. and A. series exploring modern conservatism today, its influence in society and politics, and how and why it differs (and doesn’t) from the conservative movement that most Americans thought they knew.

Jane Coaston: So let’s start with some of the basics. In 2021, the Supreme Court allowed, in practical terms, college athletes to accept endorsement deals for certain types of income. What’s been good about NIL and what’s been bad?

Senator Ted Cruz: Well, I’m glad the Supreme Court did that. I think it is a much better and more fair system. Athletes spend thousands and thousands of hours developing incredible skills, and in many instances those athletes produce millions and millions of dollars for universities, for conferences. And it is only fair that the men and women who work so hard to develop those skills be able to enjoy the benefits.

On the other hand, where we are now in college athletics is the Wild West. We have wide-open bidding wars. We have athletes moving from school to school to school and not having any loyalty to any institution. Not having the esprit de corps of the fan base and the alumni base. We have a real risk of chaos ensuing and fundamental damage occurring to college athletics, which would be a travesty.

The current path we’re on could very quickly lead to a handful of super schools with virtually unlimited budgets having all the best talent and the other schools left not able to be competitive, which does real damage to the quality of athletics overall. It’s no fun to watch an N.B.A. team play a J.V. team. For sports to be fun, you need some kind of parity where you have a real contest. There is also, I fear, a serious risk of all of the focus being on major conferences, football and basketball, and women’s sports being neglected, nonrevenue sports being neglected. One of the most important things about college sports is that it has provided an avenue for thousands upon thousands of young men and young women to be able to get a college education who would not otherwise have gotten a college education. And I think it is critically important that we preserve and protect that path.

[A vast majority of college sports revenue comes from football and men’s basketball. Many athletes play “nonrevenue” sports, like track or women’s lacrosse . ]

Coaston : Should athletes be fully classified as employees?

Cruz: No, I think that would be a disastrous outcome. That is one of the most important questions. If student athletes are treated as employees, that would ultimately hurt the student athletes. There are all sorts of restrictions that fall upon employees. Employees can be terminated at will in many instances. We should not have student athletes losing their scholarship simply because they dropped too many passes. Employees have all sorts of restrictions in terms of work, in terms of overtime, in terms of the conditions of employment. I’m quite certain the two-a-days that I ran in high school would not comply with OSHA.

[There are many views in Congress about how to classify athletes; for example, Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, has discussed a possible proposal to extend bargaining rights to student athletes, while not classifying them as employees. There are also many proposals about any number of issues raised by the changes in college sports, like a House proposal that would bar employment status for athletes while creating a congressionally appointed panel that oversees national rules for NIL deals. There is also a wide array of colleges that are potentially affected, from the powerhouse schools to more regional schools or historically Black colleges and universities . The N.C.A.A. opposes classifying students as employees.]

Coaston: I’ve been paying attention to this issue for a long time, and it’s been wild to see a lot of conservatives from Justice Kavanaugh on down basically say, “Athletes should receive compensation for the work they do in some form,” versus how people were talking about this issue when, say, S.M.U. got in trouble with the N.C.A.A in the 1980s. What changed? Do you think that there are generational divides? What changed here?

Cruz: It’s a good question and candidly, I don’t know. I will say it is, I think, a very conservative position. The very essence of the free market is that if you develop a skill that is marketable and that there is demand for, you should be compensated for that and be able to make a profit. And the disparity was becoming really stark in a way that I think fundamentally wasn’t fair.

Coaston: So one big thing missing in college sports is transparency. A lot of student athletes don’t know their fair market value, so to speak. I know you envision a public database of information with anonymized NIL deals so that athletes and others can understand their fair market value. How would that work exactly?

Cruz: Well, it’s exactly right that there’s a lack of information and you’ve got, in many instances, young men and young women that are 17, 18, 19 years old with very limited information, and it’s hard to know what’s even remotely a fair market value. It’s hard to know what a defensive lineman at a comparable program would typically be compensated at what level. When you’re dealing with young people, many of whom are teenagers, they often have very limited business experience. We’re seeing the rise of agents including some really unscrupulous players who take advantage of the students.

Being able to look and see what comparable players and comparable positions and comparable teams are being compensated at gives you a sense of at least the range of the market. It’s not all that different than if you’re buying a car and you go look at AutoTrader online to say, “OK, what is the average price if I want to buy a Jeep Cherokee?”

Coaston: So you mentioned some concerns about competitiveness a little earlier. Obviously there’s a growing divide between schools like Texas and Ohio State and a lot of the smaller ones. I know my alma mater has money to burn. So does Texas. And you mentioned how competitiveness is important, but should the government have a role in preserving competitiveness in college sports and if so, why?

Cruz: So, I don’t think the government should directly regulate, but I think the N.C.A.A. should have a role in preserving competitiveness. Schools like Texas would probably do pretty well because they would have essentially unlimited money for athletics. I was at Kyle Field a few years ago when the Aggies beat Alabama (Alabama was the No. 1 team in the country). I’ll tell you, Kyle Field went nuts when A&M won that game. You look a couple of years ago, Baylor won March Madness. Baylor is, relatively speaking, a small school with much more limited resources than a U.T. or a Michigan, and yet Baylor can win it all. That’s part of what really makes March Madness so much fun. It’s part of what makes college football so much fun.

Coaston: What is the ideal outcome for college sports in, let’s say, five years? Let’s say that a deal comes about, your bill gets put through. What does it look like?

Cruz: Well, one piece that is likely to change that is the settlement that is expected to come out in the House v. N.C.A.A. litigation. At this point, we don’t know the details about what’s in the settlement. But there’s widespread speculation that it will include some components of revenue sharing. That may prove to be an impetus for Congress to act and potentially to codify some aspects of that settlement. We’ll have to see the details of the settlement before making an assessment of it, whether that’s a good idea or not. But I think we want to have an outcome where the N.C.A.A. has the authority to set basic rules that protect student athletes, that protect NIL rights, but that also protect what is great about college athletics.

A number of weeks ago, I hosted a round table in the Senate on NIL, and it included a number of stakeholders. One of the people who participated was Nick Saban, who described how the current chaos is a big part of the reason he left coaching in Alabama.

[Since Mr. Cruz and I spoke, the N.C.A.A. and the five power conferences voted to approve a proposed settlement in this class-action suit, which would include back-pay damages for former athletes. The proposal also reportedly includes, going forward, an optional revenue sharing model that would make a portion of annual revenue distributable to athletes. The settlement is not finalized yet, but revenue sharing would be another big change to the college system.]

Coaston: I have to ask, I’m curious as to the landscape before NIL. I keep thinking back. You mentioned that Texas A&M-Alabama game. I think about someone like Johnny Manziel, the Texas A&M quarterback who was suspended for allowing his likeness to be used for commercial purposes, or some of the figures who definitely received payments, but perhaps in a less legal manner. When you talk to coaches who are at big programs, they must know what types of activities were taking place at those programs back then. How did NIL change things?

Cruz: The old rules were that athletes were not supposed to be paid. A lot of places cheated, but they did so in darkness and hiding it. Sometimes they got caught and sometimes they didn’t get caught. That on the face of it is not a very good way to run a system. I think it is better doing it openly and transparently, and I think we have moved substantially in that direction. The combination of NIL with the transfer portal I think has exacerbated the problem because look, anyone who likes sports, I watch pro sports, I watch college sports and they’re different.

[For many years, college athletes typically had to sit out a year if they transferred schools. Since 2018, athletes have been able to enter the transfer portal , change schools and play the next season, which they do, from quarterbacks to women’s basketball players.]

I mean, watching the N.B.A. or the N.F.L. is a lot of fun. But I cheered for James Harden when he was with the Rockets. Now he’s not with the Rockets anymore. And that’s part of the N.B.A. He goes to the Nets and then the Clippers., and that’s part of the N.B.A. College has always been different. College, you have your alums and you’re rooting for your school and you have allegiances. It’s fundamentally different than pro sports. And part of it is typically the athletes stay at a school for the four years. If they make a commitment, they’re getting an education.

I think commoditizing it and lessening every athlete’s attachment to their school is not good for college sports. Earl Campbell only makes sense as a Longhorn. I was at the Rose Bowl when Vince Young and Texas beat U.S.C. for the national championship; if we saw Vince Young playing the next year for U.S.C., that would piss me off. I also think it is very important when addressing this issue to remember the vast majority of college athletes are not N.F.L. or N.B.A. superstars — the vast majority of college athletes will never play pro sports. It’s not going to pay their mortgage; it’s not going to feed their kids. But the degree they get, the education they get, hopefully will enable them to get a job that is going to pay their mortgage and that is going to feed their kids.

Coaston: You’re usually very restrained as a limited-government conservative about when and how Congress and the federal government should intervene in private enterprise. Does your involvement with these N.C.A.A. issues represent an evolution in your thinking? Or if not, help us understand the interest here from a limited-government conservative.

Cruz: Well, there’s a difference between a conservative and an anarchist. I believe government exists and has important roles and responsibilities. Under our Constitution, the federal government has the authority to act where it is needed and consistent with constitutional authority.

In this instance, a state-by-state solution doesn’t work because conferences are by design national. The State of Texas can’t regulate what colleges in Oklahoma do, and Oklahoma can’t regulate what they’re doing in Alabama. The only way to have a national set of rules is at the federal level. I’m a big believer in principles of federalism — and Montesquieu and others describe them, that as much government as possible should be local, and everything should be local, except that which has to be at the state level, and as much government as possible should be at the state level, and what should be federal is only that which has to be at a national level. Here, because we’re dealing with interstate competition, interstate commerce and national competition that is each year culminated in a national championship, the only level of government that has the authority to address these issues is the federal government.

Coaston: My final questions are about politics. You’re running for re-election this year, for a third term. In your estimation, are Texas voters overall trending in a more conservative direction, a more progressive direction or a more centrist direction?

Cruz: I think some of both. Texas is changing significantly. When I was first elected in 2012, there were 26 million Texans. Today, there are more than 30 million Texans. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the No. 1 reason is Texas is where the jobs are. People are packing up and moving from bright-blue states, from New York and California and Illinois, and they’re moving to red states that have low taxes, that have low regulations, that have an environment that is conducive to small businesses and conducive to job creation. I think Texas needs to protect what we have. We need to keep Texas Texas. But if you look at the in-migration to Texas, I break it into two groups.

No. 1, there are people that are in blue states and they’re fed up. They can’t stand the high taxes, they can’t stand the regulations, they can’t stand the woke policies. They couldn’t stand the Covid lockdowns and shutdowns and schools being closed down. They look across the country and they say, “Where do I want to be?” And they pick Texas. The data show those folks coming to Texas are actually more conservative than the median Texas vote. They show up in Texas and they buy a pickup truck and boots and a hat and a shotgun. I call them Refugees for Freedom. I want every one of them to keep coming to Texas.

There is a second group, which is: A company moves to Texas and it transfers its employees to Texas. And in that circumstance, the individual employees didn’t make a decision “I want to be in Texas.” Many of them just decided to stay with their job and transfer. In my experience, many of those employees vote exactly like they did in the state they came from. We’ve got a whole lot of people in the first category and a whole lot of people in the second category. I think Texas is in flux, and that’s an argument that we’re having right now in real time.

Coaston: You ran for president in 2016 and you did well against Donald Trump. Any interest in running for president in 2028 or further down the line?

Cruz: I can tell you my focus is 100 percent on 2024. I’m running for re-election in Texas. It is a big race. Democrats are expected to spend over a hundred million dollars trying to beat me. And so I’m putting in 18 hours a day to fighting for 30 million Texans and making the case to the people of Texas that we need to continue the policies that are working so well in Texas. As for future years, those questions will be decided sometime in the future.

[In 2018, Mr. Cruz’s opponent spent more than $79 million, while he spent about $46 million.]

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Jane Coaston was the host of Opinion’s podcast “ The Argument .” Previously, she reported on conservative politics, the G.O.P. and the rise of the right. She also co-hosted the podcast “The Weeds.” @ janecoaston