That’s the conclusion from a new paper by economist Michael Anderson from Berkeley, that uses Vegas odds to control for endogeneity:
According to the report, if a college improves its season wins by 5 games, it can expect alumni athletic donations to increase by $682,000 (28 percent), applications to increase by 677 (5 percent), in-state enrollment to increase by 76 students (3 percent) and incoming students’ 25th-percentile SAT scores to increase by nine points (1 percent). But Anderson said these positive effects would not recoup however much money a college invested in its athletics program.
Insidehighereded writeup here, paper here (must be on campus). This is one of few papers to find any positive impacts from big-time sports, even small and expensive ones. The downside includes drinking and bad grades and brain-damage and loss of institutional control. 7/3/2012:
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