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Keeping Score When It Counts: Academic Progress/Graduation Success Rate Study of 2012 NCAA Division I Women’s and Men’s Basketball Tournament Teams
Keeping Score When It Counts: Academic Progress/Graduation Success Rate Study of 2012 NCAA Division I Women’s and Men’s Basketball Tournament Teams (PDF)
Source: The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (University of Central Florida)
The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida (UCF) released its annual study, “Keeping Score When It Counts: Academic Progress/Graduation Success Rate Study of 2012 NCAA Division I Women’s and Men’s Basketball Tournament Teams,” which compares graduation rates and academic progress rates for Division I teams that have been selected for the men’s and women’s brackets of the 2012 NCAA Basketball Tournaments.
Dr. Richard Lapchick, the primary author of the study, is the director of TIDES and Chair of the DeVos Sport Business Management Graduate Program at UCF. The study was co-authored by Michael Farris and Michelle Milkovich.
This study is a follow-up report for the men’s tournament study that was released on March 12, 2012 (http://www.tidesport.org/Grad%20Rates/2012%20Men’s%20Basketball%20Tournament%20Teams%20Study.pdf). The study compares the academic performance of male and female basketball student-athletes and of African-American and white basketball student-athletes by examining the Graduation Success Rates (GSR) and the Academic Progress Rates (APR) for the tournament teams. The women graduated at a rate of 89 percent vs. 67 percent for the men and had only three teams in the field that had below a 925.
Lapchick stated, “The women’s teams always give us good news to report each year. It has been clear that student-athletes on women’s basketball teams graduate at a higher rate than student-athletes on men’s basketball teams. Additionally, the disparity gap between white and African-American student-athletes has always been significantly smaller on women’s teams compared to men’s teams. This year’s study reveals that there has been no change in the disparity between graduation rates of white and African-American women student-athletes which remains at eight percent compared to 28 percent for the men’s teams.”
There are 22 women’s teams that have a 100 percent graduation rate in the 2012 field. They include: Dayton, DePaul, Oklahoma, Duke, Kansas State, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, Creighton, Ohio State, Iowa State, Nebraska, Penn State, Georgetown, Florida, Kentucky, Notre Dame, Louisiana State, St. John’s, South Carolina, Iowa, Connecticut, Princeton. All but one team in the women’s field graduated more than 60 percent of their student-athletes.
Returns to Education in Professional Football
Returns to Education in Professional Football (PDF)
Source: Research Papers in Economics
After three years in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), collegiate football players face a trade-off between spending more time in the NCAA and pursuing a career in the National Football League (NFL) by declaring for the draft. We analyze the starting salaries and signing bonuses for 1,673 rookies in the NFL, who entered the league between 2001 and 2009 through the NFL draft. We instrument the endogenous decision to enter the professional market with a player’s month of birth. A player’s true talent is only imperfectly observed and the instrument provides a causal link between time at college and subsequent salaries in the NFL through the relative age effect. Our estimates suggest that a player enjoys a 6% higher starting salary in the NFL, and a 15% higher first-year signing bonus, for each year with the college team. On average, a rookie is estimated to earn $131,000 more in his rookie season, if he enters the NFL one year later. Our analysis of a typical labor market in professional sports shows that the returns to education in sports are sizeable and surprisingly similar to returns to formal education. The results of our analysis provide information for the players who are deciding about declaring for the draft, however, also colleges and the teams in the NFL may find the results of interest.
Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions
Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions
Source: Harvard Business School Working Papers
Certain markets face the problem of “unraveling,” in which competition for good talent leads a firm to make job offers earlier and earlier, without sufficient knowledge about any given applicant—and in which applicants are forced to decide whether to accept a job before they really know much about working for that firm. Harvard Business School professor Alvin E. Roth discusses how this issue affects the labor markets for new lawyers and gastroenterology fellows, as well as the market for postseason college football bowls. Key concepts include:
- The market for postseason college bowls is one in which the negative effects of unraveling can be easily quantified: If two teams are matched to play a postseason game before they have finished the regular season, it’s possible that one or both will lose some of their remaining regular season games, making the postseason bowl game less attractive to potential TV viewers than it would have been if it had featured more successful teams.
- Efforts to stop the problem of unraveling in the market for law graduates have generally been unsuccessful, as have attempts to establish uniform dates for recruiting and hiring. This proves that unraveling is a problem even in markets such as law, where salaries are easily adjustable.
- On the other hand, the market for new medical residents has faced little unraveling ever since that market introduced a stable resident matching system. This negates the idea that rigid pricing is the cause of unraveling, because the medical field generally pays its new residents uniformly across the board.
+ Full Paper (PDF)
The Bottom Line: Accounting for Revenues and Expenditures in Intercollegiate Athletics
The Bottom Line: Accounting for Revenues and Expenditures in Intercollegiate Athletics (PDF)
Source: Research Papers in Economics (RePEc)
This paper examines the profitability of Division I athletic programs at colleges and universities in the United States under a variety of accounting definitions of profit. The data identify several broad themes. First, a majority of athletic departments rely heavily on direct and indirect subsidization of their programs by the student body, the institution itself, and state governments in order to balance their books. Without such funding, less than a third of BCS athletic departments and no non-BCS departments are in the black. Second, athletic programs rely heavily on contributions to balance their books. Donations to athletic departments may serve as a substitute for donations to the rest of the university, lowering giving to other programs. Third, football and men’s basketball programs are generally highly profitable at BCS schools, but below this top tier, fewer than 10% of football programs and 15% of men’s basketball programs show a profit by any reasonable accounting measures.
