TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of athletic performance on alumni giving
T2 - An analysis of microdata
AU - Meer, Jonathan
AU - Rosen, Harvey S.
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful to B. Douglas Bernheim, William G. Bowen, Ronald Ehrenberg, Caroline Hoxby, Donna Lawrence, Brian McDonald, Darwin Miller, Lorin Maurer, C. Rob Orr, Julie Shadle, members of Princeton’s Public Finance Working Group, members of Stanford’s Labor Reading Group, and two referees for useful suggestions. Zhihao Zhang provided excellent research assistance. This research was supported in part by Princeton’s Center for Economic Policy Studies and in part by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
PY - 2009/6
Y1 - 2009/6
N2 - An ongoing controversy in the literature on the economics of higher education centers on whether the success of a school's athletic program affects alumni donations. This paper uses a unique data set to investigate this issue. The data contain detailed information about donations made by alumni of a selective research university as well as a variety of their economic and demographic characteristics. One important question is how to characterize the success of an athletic program. We focus not only on the performance of the most visible teams, football and basketball, but also on the success of the team on which he or she played as an undergraduate. One of our key findings is that the impact of athletic success on donations differs for men and women. When a male graduate's former team wins its conference championship, his donations for general purposes increase by about 7% and his donations to the athletic program increase by about the same percentage. Football and basketball records generally have small and statistically insignificant effects; in some specifications, a winning basketball season reduces donations. For women there is no statistically discernible effect of a former team's success on current giving; as is the case for men, the impacts of football and basketball, while statistically significant in some specifications, are not important in magnitude. Another novel result is that for males, varsity athletes whose teams were successful when they were undergraduates subsequently make larger donations to the athletic program. For example, if a male alumnus's team won its conference championship during his senior year, his subsequent giving to the athletic program is about 8% a year higher, ceteris paribus.
AB - An ongoing controversy in the literature on the economics of higher education centers on whether the success of a school's athletic program affects alumni donations. This paper uses a unique data set to investigate this issue. The data contain detailed information about donations made by alumni of a selective research university as well as a variety of their economic and demographic characteristics. One important question is how to characterize the success of an athletic program. We focus not only on the performance of the most visible teams, football and basketball, but also on the success of the team on which he or she played as an undergraduate. One of our key findings is that the impact of athletic success on donations differs for men and women. When a male graduate's former team wins its conference championship, his donations for general purposes increase by about 7% and his donations to the athletic program increase by about the same percentage. Football and basketball records generally have small and statistically insignificant effects; in some specifications, a winning basketball season reduces donations. For women there is no statistically discernible effect of a former team's success on current giving; as is the case for men, the impacts of football and basketball, while statistically significant in some specifications, are not important in magnitude. Another novel result is that for males, varsity athletes whose teams were successful when they were undergraduates subsequently make larger donations to the athletic program. For example, if a male alumnus's team won its conference championship during his senior year, his subsequent giving to the athletic program is about 8% a year higher, ceteris paribus.
KW - Educational economics
KW - Educational finance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=67349155343&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=67349155343&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.econedurev.2008.06.003
DO - 10.1016/j.econedurev.2008.06.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:67349155343
SN - 0272-7757
VL - 28
SP - 287
EP - 294
JO - Economics of Education Review
JF - Economics of Education Review
IS - 3
ER -