43 – Methodology for Applications in Sports
The College Sports Project: What Have We Learned?
John Emerson
Middlebury College
The College Sports Project gathered data prospectively on over 200,000 students at 77 NCAA Division-III colleges between years 2005 and 2011. A goal of the CSP is to provide reports to presidents of participating institutions that can lead to better alignment of athletic programs and core academic missions of the institutions. The outcomes measured include college graduation, grade point averages, choice of major, and withdrawal from college. The analyses compare athletes to non-athletes at the same institution using regression models for GPA, with entering qualifications of students and their demographic characteristics as covariates. Non-athletes have higher grades than athletes; males give larger differences than females. Students recruited as part of the admissions process have lower grades than non-recruited athletes. After adjusting for student qualifications and demographic characteristics, the differences between recruited male athletes and their non-athlete counterparts are as great as 0.4 percentile units at highly selective institutions. Athletes graduate at rates comparable to non-athletes.
