128. Getting what they pay for
[From Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams]
Over the last twenty years, large universities discovered a simple equation: Winning football and basketball teams would get them on television, which would make them more famous, which would attract students looking for a good school. Once again, it’s the marketing problem of equating familiar with good.
Since 1985, the salary of college football coaches (at public universities) has increased by 650 percent. Professors? By 32 percent.
There is no question that over this time, the quality of football being played has skyrocketed. Attendance at games is up. Student involvement in sports spectating has gone up as well. And the fame of the schools that have invested in big-time sports has risen as well.
What hasn’t improved, not a bit, is the education and quality of life of the student body.
In fact, according to research by Glen Waddell at the University of Oregon, for every three games won by the Fighting Ducks (winners of the Rose Bowl), the GPA of male students dropped. Not the male students on the team—the male students who pay a fortune to attend the University of Oregon.
Further research by Charles Clotfelter, a professor at Duke, found that during March Madness, schools that had teams in the playoffs had 6 percent fewer downloads of academic articles at their libraries. And if the team won a close game or an upset, the number dropped 19 percent the next day. And it never rose enough later to make up for the dip.
We get what we pay for.
Colleges aren’t stupid, and as long as the game works, they’ll keep playing it. After the University of Nebraska entered the Big 10, applications at their law school went up 20 percent—in a year when applications nationwide were down 10 percent. As long as students and their parents pay money for famous, and as long as famous is related to TV and to sports, expect to see more of it.
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