THE IMPACT OF HIGHLY PUBLICIZED CAMPUS SCANDALS ON COLLEGE OUTCOMES

Patrick Rooney and Jonathan Smith

Contemporary Economic Policy, 2019, vol. 37, issue 3, 492-508

Abstract: Recently, many high‐profile scandals have occurred on college campuses. How might scandals affect colleges' outcomes? To investigate, we construct a dataset of scandals at the top 100 U.S. universities from 2001 to 2013. We find that scandals with significant media coverage substantially reduce applications. For example, a scandal covered in a long‐form news article leads to a 10% drop in applications the following year‐roughly the same impact of dropping ten spots in prominent college rankings. This impact persists for 2 years. We find no impact on incoming student body competitiveness, yield, or alumni donations, and little effect on deterring future scandals. (JEL L82, I23, D83)

Date: 2019
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