Party Schools, Football Schools and Student Quality
Austin F. Eggers
Assistant Professor, Appalachian State University
Peter A Groothuis
Professor, Appalachian State University
Abstract: Universities acquire reputations as academic schools, party schools or even football schools. Some reputations universities wish to pursue and others they wish to avoid. We explore how the being named the NCAA division one national champion in football, or being named the top party school by the Princeton Review, affects the quality of students enrolling at a university. Using a thirteen year panel study of 120 NCAA division one universities, we find that being named the top party school in the nation lowers the number of top tier students who choose to attend the university as measured by SAT scores. We also find that winning a national championship in division one NCAA football lowers the number of high achieving students at a university as measured by high school rank and GPA. We suggest that the publicity of being named a national champion in football, or a top party schoolm enhances a school’s reputation for those amenities, which subsequently influences student enrollment decisions.
“The research in this paper was funded by a Deans Club Grant Walker College of Business. We thank Angel Dills and Kurt Rothoff for useful comments and Parker Redding for research assistance.”
JEL CODES: I23, J24, Z22
KEY WORDS: Higher Education, NCAA