6/4/2012: LA Times article on why so many students leave CA for college:
The University of Oregon, which enrolled about 500 California freshmen five years ago, has also seen that figure balloon to more than 1,000 in 2011. The university’s increased presence in the Golden State, paired with the wandering eyes of frustrated parents and students, has led to a boon for the school, said Roger Thompson, vice provost of enrollment management.
“The gold rush is on, and in this case the gold rush is for college-going students,” he said. “We’ve got a pioneer spirit at the University of Oregon.”
But the administration continues to spout the fiction that winning sports teams lead to increased enrollment. To justify the subsidies for Kilkenny’s baseball? Come on. That money would hire 20-40 new profs – enough to make at least a dent in the student-faculty ratio and increase the chances students can get their courses and graduate on time.
Do you think UO administrators would support these subsidies – or at least look a little more closely at them – if they weren’t getting thousands of dollars in free tickets and travel to away games for themselves – and often their families too? Why isn’t Bob Berdahl worried about this sort of conflict of interest?
Not arguing for or against athletics increasing enrollment, but you are conflating two facts here. What’s ballooned is Oregon students from California, which might be a “boon” because they pay more tuition.
That doesn’t mean that the boon in California students coming to Oregon has necessarily led to increased overall enrollment. They could be coming in place of other students. Hasn’t the ratio of in-state/out-of-state shifted?
I’m just not sure the increase in Californians coming to Oregon is an argument against the claim that athletics increases enrollment. And, Oregon isn’t the only place those students could have gone, so one could argue that they came here because the situation in California sucks AND we have attractive athletics programs.
Again, I’m not arguing that but I do think we ought to examine our claims more carefully.
When I teach physics 101 I like to ask the CA kids who come to my office hours why they chose Oregon. Many of them actually turned down one of the UC’s to come here (e.g., Davis, Santa Cruz). It’s quite common for them to mention the “college experience” of “big time sports” in answering my question. A good administrator interested in maintaining out of state enrollment would probably commission some polling or other study to get to the bottom of this.
Having said that I do think big time college sports has a lot of problems along the lines you emphasize on this blog.
I have anecdotes like that too. The data apparently doesn’t show it in aggregate though, perhaps it’s a sample selection effect. See
https://uomatters.com/2012/04/athletic-giving-decreases-giving-to.html