The faculty Flutie factor: Does football performance affect a university's US News and World Report peer assessment score?

Sean Mulholland, Tomic, Aleksandar (Sasha) and Samuel N. Sholander

Economics of Education Review, 2014, vol. 43, issue C, 79-90

Abstract: Analyzing the peer assessment category of the US News and World Report's America's Best Colleges rankings, we find that universities fielding a Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) team are more highly rated by administrators and faculty at peer institutions. Universities are also more highly rated if their football team receives a greater number of votes in either the final Associated Press or Coaches’ Poll. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, our estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in votes from one season to the next is associated with a peer score increase that is about equal (in absolute value terms) to the mean year-over-year peer score decline witnessed by the institutions in our sample. Performance matters even if we only focus on FBS schools.

Keywords: College football; Football bowl subdivision; National universities; Peer assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 I23 L83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Working Paper: The Faculty Flutie Factor: Does Football Performance Affect a University’s US News and World Report Peer Assessment Score? (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:43:y:2014:i:c:p:79-90

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2014.09.006

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