Kansas University athletes should be monetarily reimbursed and guaranteed access to a degree for when their playing days are finished, a former law dean told an off-campus audience Wednesday.

“If I told you that the university ran a business that generated millions of dollars — a business that depended on a group of mostly teen-aged, mostly black laborers who are prohibited from being paid a living wage, you would say, ‘That’s intolerable.’ And yet that’s exactly what we do,” said KU law professor Mike Hoeflich.

Hoeflich’s comments were part of a Wednesday presentation, “Intercollegiate Athletics and True Academics at the University: Can They Coexist?” during a University Forum luncheon at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread.

Hoeflich ridiculed the notion that scholarships adequately compensated student athletes for their efforts.

“It’s horribly exploitive,” he said, proposing instead that universities pay their athletes minor-league wages while guaranteeing them access to a four-year degree after their eligibility expires.

And it’s a sham, he said, to pretend that all student athletes, especially those out for football and basketball, can meet the demands of intercollegiate athletics while, at the same time, receiving an education worthy of a degree.

An academic for most of his adult life, Hoeflich said he didn’t share most professors’ contempt for the high salaries paid to today’s coaches and athletic directors.

“Why get upset about it?” he asked. “It’s really no different than what movies stars are paid, or NASCAR drivers or corporate raiders. It’s all market driven — a market that’s gone crazy.”

And it’s no different, he said, from law school professors being paid more than engineering professors, who routinely earn more than their colleagues in social work or education.

Attacking coaches’ salaries without addressing faculty salaries at-large would be shortsighted, Hoeflich said.

“You can’t solve one inequity by creating another inequity,” he said.

Hoeflich reminded the audience, mostly retired KU faculty and staff, that coaches do not have tenure and can be fired on a whim. So while most faculty are envious of coaches salaries, he said, few are willing to give up their tenure.

“Think about that: Every time you lose a game, you’ve got 30,000 Susan Wagles weighing in on you,” he said, referring to the Wichita state senator who last year accused KU professor Dennis Dailey of promoting pedophilia and harassing students enrolled in his “Human Sexuality in Everyday Life” class.

Subjected to a university-led investigation, Dailey was later exonerated.

Hoeflich served as law dean at KU from 1994 to 2000. He writes an opinion column for the Journal-World.