Athletic Success directly affects enrollment

[WestWYOPoke]

Interesting research paper on how athletic success does directly affect college enrollment. It's quite long, but I encourage everyone to at least read the conclusion. One interesting quote:

I further find that when a school goes from being mediocre to being great on the
football field, applications increase by 17.7 percent. To achieve similar effects, a school would
have to either decrease its tuition by 3.8 percent or increase the quality of its education by
recruiting higher-quality faculty who are paid 5.1 percent more in the academic labor market.
I also find that schools become more selective with athletic success. For a mid-level school, in
terms of average SAT scores, the admissions rate improves by 4.8 percent with high-level
athletic success.

http://footballscoop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/13-067_99c551d6-c484-4245-9e49-964d2283cd98.pdf

 

[joshvanklomp]

FGCU has seen an unprecedented surge in freshmen applications, a 35.4 percent year-over-year spike that President Wilson Bradshaw would like to think is a result of surging academic prestige. He knows that’s not the sole reason, though.

“Our visibility in basketball certainly didn’t hurt,” Bradshaw said. “We have to acknowledge that.”
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In 2006, a George Mason professor published a study claiming the Final Four-qualifying Patriots had received roughly $677 million in free advertising; its enrollment spiked by 350 percent. In 2010, after Butler’s inches-away loss to Duke in the national title game, the university estimated it received about $410 million in free exposure. It received a 41 percent increase in admissions applications. And in 2012, BYU professors discovered that successful runs in football and basketball correlated with steadier, more sustainable increases in interest.

http://www.espn.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/92235/fgcus-enrollment-did-exactly-what-youd-expect