(1) Visual. Link to
Download.
(2) MLA Citation
Cross, Michael E., and Toma, J. D. . "INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS AND STUDENT COLLEGE CHOICE: Exploring the Impact of Championship Seasons on Undergraduate Applications." Research in Higher Education 1998th ser. 39.6 (1998): 633-61. Print.
(3) Summary
This reading is focused on the data involving application increases and decreases in undergraduate applications following a national championship season for basketball and football from 1979-92. The authors compare the data to other schools with similar application numbers and athletic program size, to determine what effect the success brought to the situation. To avoid from skewing their variable (athletic success via national championship), they avoided choosing schools that had considerable success in athletics during the comparative periods of time.
(4) Authors
Michael E. Cross, PhD -- Director of Athletics
As the
Bradley Department of Athletics advances through the 2013-14 season, Dr. Michael Cross completes his fourth full year at the department's helm after taking over as the University's ninth Director of Athletics Jan. 1, 2010. In his position, Dr. Cross supervises operations, athletic performance, NCAA compliance, communications and fundraising for Bradley's 15 intercollegiate athletic programs, while serving as a liaison between the Athletic Department and other units of the University. He also serves as a member of Bradley University President Joanne Glasser's cabinet.
J. Douglas Toma -- Associate Prof., Inst. of Higher Education , U. of Georgia
J. Douglas Toma is associate professor at the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia and has an appointment on the School of Law faculty there. He also serves as dean of the Franklin Residential College at UGA.
Toma writes primarily about strategy and management in higher education, but also addresses qualitative research and legal issues in higher education in his scholarly work. His present research is on systems approaches to higher education management and strategies used by institutions to position themselves for greater prestige. Toma is author, among other books, of Football U.: Spectator Sports in the Life of the American University (Michigan, 2003), in which he addressed the uses by U.S. institutions of intercollegiate American football in advancing strategic ends.
J. Douglas Toma passed on May 4, 2011 at the age of 47.
(5) Key Terms/Concepts
College Athletics Impact: the athletic department has the ability to have a huge impact on a University. It is the most visible production for most universities, potentially for both good and bad reasons. Given its growing popularity and potential danger, this is a great time for research into this topic.
Variables of Study:
-Success: winning a National championship in football or basketball
-Applications: Increase/decrease
This information is combined and analyzed, then compared to closely matched schools for a fuller view of the impact on application rates across the country.
(6) Quotes
"College athletics are an activity, however, that scholars and administrators too commonly fail to address or view as distinct from other institutional functions and significant in their own right. Intercollegiate athletics are too often considered separate from core activities on campus, but they advance these causes, though in often nebulous ways"
--(Toma and Cross 634).
"Finally, as our conseptual framework, we adopted the model proposed by (HandG 1987) which divides the college choice process into three stages: (1) predisposition, where a student arrives at a tentative to continue his or her education; (2) search, where a student gathers information on the attributes and values that characterize alternatives among institutions: and (3) choice, where a student decides which institution to attend. We suggest that the significant success in intercollegiate athletics and the positive attention it produces has an influence on the search and choice stages, and to a lesser extent, may even influence predisposition in making certain students -- those who follow college sports -- aware of higher education from an early age"
--(Toma and Cross 637).
"Also, it would be interesting to determine whether there is a difference in any changes in application quality between selective and less selective schools. Another interesting question would be whether there are corresponding changes in yields when admit rates increase, or whether schools simply increase the number of students that they admit into the first-year class. A final related research question might be whether the geographical diversity that oftne goes along with selectivity expands concurrently with increases n applications or do simply more students from the same geographical areas continue to apply"
--(Toma and Cross 656).
(7) Value
This journal explains that investing money towards building a successful athletic department can help schools gain access to more student applications in competition with other universities across the country. I also find that this connects very well to the party pathway discussed by Armstrong and Hamilton.
