An excellent review of a contemporary issue! Your data points are especially relevant and helpful. I do think you might have underestimated the positive impact of a winning athletic program on the attractiveness to potential students. People want to associate with winners.
Nice work. I’ve shared this with several friends, and one son who recently left his position as a D1 football coach/coordinator over concerns of the impact from professionaled college sports.
Its not that I think a winning athletic program is irrelevant to student choices. Its that there actually isn't much definitive evidence that it *is* relevant, outside of "Flutie effect" surprise wins. I do think this is a really compelling question that universities need to wrestle with, not introspect, but rather carefully analyze. Especially if they are going to escalate their subsidies to maintain an expensive amenity in a zero sum arms-race environment.
I appreciate the willingness to question college athletics objectively!
I really think D1 basketball and football are just minor-league professional sports at this point, with little to do with the university apart from essentially age criteria. I wonder if they really should just be cleaved off from the universities entirely.
Lafayette Boilermakers vs. Storrs Huskies. (...okay, I can't say that has much of a ring to it, but it could grow on me.)
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Regarding student success correlations, I have to imagine it partially has to do with kids who participate in sports just being well off generally, and I'm not sure if you called that out. Surely, parents who have the means to send their kids to club sports practices are more prepared to send their kids to college.
An excellent review of a contemporary issue! Your data points are especially relevant and helpful. I do think you might have underestimated the positive impact of a winning athletic program on the attractiveness to potential students. People want to associate with winners.
Nice work. I’ve shared this with several friends, and one son who recently left his position as a D1 football coach/coordinator over concerns of the impact from professionaled college sports.
Its not that I think a winning athletic program is irrelevant to student choices. Its that there actually isn't much definitive evidence that it *is* relevant, outside of "Flutie effect" surprise wins. I do think this is a really compelling question that universities need to wrestle with, not introspect, but rather carefully analyze. Especially if they are going to escalate their subsidies to maintain an expensive amenity in a zero sum arms-race environment.
I appreciate the willingness to question college athletics objectively!
I really think D1 basketball and football are just minor-league professional sports at this point, with little to do with the university apart from essentially age criteria. I wonder if they really should just be cleaved off from the universities entirely.
Lafayette Boilermakers vs. Storrs Huskies. (...okay, I can't say that has much of a ring to it, but it could grow on me.)
---
Regarding student success correlations, I have to imagine it partially has to do with kids who participate in sports just being well off generally, and I'm not sure if you called that out. Surely, parents who have the means to send their kids to club sports practices are more prepared to send their kids to college.