Athletics and Admissions: The Impact of the Penn State Football Scandal on Student Quality

Abstract

We ask whether a scandal in a university’s athletics department affects the quality of the incoming student body. To do so, we evaluate the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State University in 2011. The violations involved a former employee with the crimes occurring a decade prior. The plausibly-exogenous shock allows us to make a causal identification of the scandal's effect on the university. We use synthetic control methods establishing economically meaningful impacts. We find that the average high school GPA is 0.12 points less and the proportion of students with high SAT Math scores is down 4.8 percentage points.

Keywords

admissions football higher education scandal synthetic control

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abadie

Diamond

Hainmueller

(2010). Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: Estimating the effect of California’s tobacco control program. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 105(490), 493–505. https://doi.org/10.1198/jasa.2009.ap08746

Abadie

Gardeazabal

(2003). The economic costs of conflict: A case study of the Basque country. American Economic Review, 93(1), 113–132. https://doi.org/10.1257/000282803321455188

Anderson

M. L.

(2017). The benefits of college athletic success: An application of the propensity score design. Review of Economics and Statistics, 99(1), 119–134. https://doi.org/10.1162/REST_a_00589

Bremmer

D. S.

Kesselring

R. G.

(1993). The advertising effect of university athletic success: A reappraisal of the evidence. Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 33(4), 409–421. https://doi.org/10.1016/1062-9769(93)90006-6

Brown

R. W.

(1993). An estimate of the rent generated by a premium college football player. Economic Inquiry, 31(4), 671–684. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1993.tb00898.x

Carmichael

da Rossi

Thomas

(2017). Production, efficiency, and corruption in Italian serie A football. Journal of Sports Economics, 18(1), 34–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002514551802

Caudill

S. B.

Hourican

Mixon

F. G.

(2018). Does college football impact the size of university applicant pools and the quality of entering students? Applied Economics, 50(17), 1885–1890. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2017.1380289

Cunningham

(2018). Causal inference: The mixtape. Tufte-Latex.GoogleCode.com, version 1.7.

Dills

Hernandez-Julian

(2012). Negative publicity and catholic schools. Economic Inquiry, 50(1), 143–152. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2010.00342.x

10.

Eggers

A. F.

Groothuis

P. A.

Redding

Rotthoff

K. W.

Solimini

(2019). The negative effect of NCAA football bowl bans on university enrolment and applications. Applied Economics, 51(54), 5870–5877. https://doi.org/10.1080/00036846.2019.1630708

11.

Eren

Mocan

(2018). Emotional judges and unlucky juveniles. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(3), 171–205. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20160390

12.

Hernandez-Julian

Rotthoff

K. W.

(2014). The impact of college football on academic achievement. Economics of Education Review, 43, 141–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.09.002

13.

Hoffer

Humphreys

B. R.

Lacombe

D. J.

Ruseski

J. E.

(2015). Trends in NCAA athletic spending: Arms race or rising tide? Journal of Sports Economics, 16(6), 576–596. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002515592541

14.

Hughes

Shank

(2008). Assessing the impact of NCAA scandals: An exploratory analysis. International Journal of Sports Marketing & Management, 3(1/2), 78–99. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJSMM.2008.015962

15.

Humphreys

Ruseski

(2006). Financing intercollegiate athletics: The role of monitoring and enforcing NCAA recruiting regulations. International Journal of Sports Finance, 1(3), 151–161. https://doi.org/10.1.1.606.5182

16.

Humphreys

Ruseski

(2009). Monitoring cartel behavior and stability: Evidence from NCAA football. Southern Economic Journal, 75(3), 720–735.

17.

Hungerman

D. M.

(2013). Substitution and stigma: Evidence on religious markets from the catholic sex abuse scandal. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 5(3), 227–253. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.5.3.227

18.

Islam

M. Q.

(2019). Local development effect of sports facilities and sports teams: Case studies using synthetic control method. Journal of Sports Economics, 20(2), 242–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002517731874

19.

Kaul

Klöβner

Pfeifer

Schieler

(2017). Synthetic Control Methods: Never Use all Pre-Intervention Outcomes Together with Covariates, University of Hohenheim Working Paper. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/83790/

20.

Lindo

J. M.

Marcotte

D. E.

Palmer

J. E.

Swensen

I. D.

(2019). Is any press good press? The unanticipated effects of Title IX investigations on university outcomes. Economics of Education Review, 73, 101934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2019.101934

21.

Lindo

J. M.

Swensen

I. D.

Waddell

G. R.

(2012). Are big-time sports a threat to student achievement? American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 4(4), 254–274. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.4.4.254

22.

Lucas

Fink

J. P.

(2014). Euphemisms and ethics: A language-centered analysis. Journal of Business Ethics, 122(4), 551–569. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1777-0

23.

McCannon

B. C.

Wilson

(2019). “A Million Dollars in Free Advertising” Politics and Sex Offence Prosecution in the Wake of Duke Lacrosse. Supreme Court Economic Review, 27, 167–187. https://doi.org/10.1086/704366

24.

McCormick

R. E.

Tinsley

(1987). Athletics versus academics? Evidence from SAT scores. Journal of Political Economy, 95(5), 1103–1116. https://doi.org/10.1086/261505

25.

Meer

Rosen

H. S.

(2009). The impact of athletic performance on alumni giving: An analysis of microdata. Economics of Education Review, 28(3), 287–294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2008.06.003

26.

Mixon

F. G.

(1995). Athletics versus academics? Rejoining the evidence from SAT scores. Education Economics, 3(3), 277–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/09645299500000025

27.

Mixon

F. G.

Ressler

R. W.

(1995). An empirical note on the impact of college athletics on tuition revenues. Applied Economics Letters, 2(10), 383–387. https://doi.org/10.1080/758518995

28.

Mixon

F. G.

Trevino

L. J.

(2005). From kickoff to commencement: The positive role of intercollegiate athletics in higher education. Economics of Education Review, 24(1), 97–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2003.09.005

29.

Mulholland

S. E.

Tomic

A. (.

Sholander

S. N.

(2014). The faculty Flutie factor: Does football performance affect a university’s US news and world report peer assessment score? Economics of Education Review, 43, 79–90. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.09.006

30.

Murphy

R. G.

Trandel

G. A.

(1994). The relation between a university’s football record and the size of its applicant pool. Economics of Education Review, 13(3), 265–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-7757(94)90014-0

31.

Pope

D. G.

Pope

J. C.

(2009). The impact of college sports success on the quantity and quality of student applications. Southern Economic Journal, 75(3), 750–780.

32.

Rooney

Smith

(2019). The impact of highly publicized campus scandals on college outcomes. Contemporary Economic Policy, 37(3), 492–508. https://doi.org/10.1111/coep.12427

33.

Sanderson

Hambrick

M. E.

(2012). Covering the scandal in 140 characters: A case study in twitter’s role in coverage of the Penn State scandal. Human Kinetics Journal, 5(3), 384–402. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijsc.5.3.384

34.

Stinson

J. L.

Marquardt

Chandley

(2012). An empirical examination of university intercollegiate athletic expenditures. Sports Marketing Quarterly, 21(2), 104–114.

35.

Tucker

I. B.

(2004). A reexamination of the effect of big-time football and basketball success on graduation rates and alumni giving rates. Economics of Education Review, 23(6), 655–661. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2004.03.001

36.

Tucker

I. B.

(2005). Big-time pigskin success: Is there an advertising effect? Journal of Sports Economics, 6(2), 222–229. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002504263398

37.

Tucker

I. B.

Amato

(1993). Does big-time success in football or basketball affect SAT scores? Economics of Education Review, 12(2), 177–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/0272-7757(93)90029-G

38.

Tucker

I. B.

Amato

L. T.

(2006). A reinvestigation of the relationship between Big-time basketball success and average SAT scores. Journal of Sports Economics, 7(4), 428–440. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002505275096

39.

Zitzewitz

(2014). Does transparency reduce favoritism and corruption? Evidence from the reform of figure skating judging. Journal of Sports Economics, 15(1), 3–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527002512441479

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.44 MB