Schools often justify the expense of big-time college athletics with the claim that a strong program bolsters application numbers and increases alumni donations.
A report released Tuesday by The Knight Foundation Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics dispels such assertions.
“Individual institutions that decide to invest more money in their sports programs in the hope of raising more funds or improving their applicant pools may be throwing goods money after bad and would be wiser to spend the money in other ways,” wrote the study’s author, Robert Frank, professor of management and economics at Cornell University.
Most college athletic programs spend more money than they take in, and universities have come under fire in recent years as costs have escalated. Division I athletics expenditures have been growing at twice the rate of university budgets in recent years.
“The ultimate issue here is money,” William Friday, chair of the Knight Foundation, said at a news conference Tuesday. “The report says once more that there is a sense of delusion about everyone making a lot of money.”
Duke officials said the conclusions of the report held only partially true for the University, and Athletic Director Joe Alleva thought the school’s success has paid dividends for the University.
“Our athletic programs are a source of pride for our alumni and fans that does promote giving,” Alleva wrote in an e-mail. “This may not be the case at all institutions but I believe it is here. I also believe our athletic programs help to attract applicants.”
In recent years there have been no major increases in either undergraduate applications or University-wide giving in the wake of major athletic triumphs. Donations to the Iron Dukes, the athletic department’s annual fund, however, appear to be somewhat contingent on athletic success.
Recent fluctuations in donations pale in comparison to the changes in giving that occurred during the late 1980s. The men’s basketball team went to the Final Four in 1986 and then again for five straight years beginning in 1988, culminating with the 1991 and 1992 National Championships.
During the late 1980s support for Duke athletics expanded substantially, said Jack Winters, executive director of the Iron Dukes. In the same period, applications for admissions also increased measurably. At the same time, however, academic programs at the University reached a level of national prominence.
The number of applications reached a record in 1987 that was not broken until 2002. Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions, said at the time that the 2001 National Championship likely played a minor role in the uptick in applications the following year.
“Certainly the success of the athletic program at Duke has raised our visibility; just as certainly it's the combination of academic and athletic excellence that makes Duke one of a very small handful of colleges that stand out even among the most well-known institutions,” Guttentag wrote in an e-mail. “Obviously Duke’s athletic success is one of the many factors that students find appealing about Duke, but we have not been able to correlate athletic success and the number of applicants at least in the last 15 years.”
Throughout the 1990s, even in the years following Duke’s men’s basketball national championships, there was not a significant correlation between admissions numbers and basketball success.
But for Duke’s athletic department, success on the field comes with increased gifts. Officials hope that improvements in the football team over the next several years will be coupled with a jump in donations to the Iron Dukes.
“I don’t think there is any doubt that the success men’s basketball, women’s basketball and football leads to more donors to the Iron Dukes and higher donations,” Winters said. “As football gets better, that is also going to help as well.”
Winters said that the team prospects for the upcoming season dictate giving increases as much as a team’s previous season’s accolades. Economic conditions also play a major role.
For University development as a whole, athletic prowess plays a much smaller role.
“We have seen no direct correlation, particularly in the basketball team’s success, to gifts,” said Peter Vaughn, director of communications and donor relations for University Development.
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