Educational contributions, academic quality, and athletic success

This article examines the role of successful Division I football and basket ball programs in motivating alumni and other donors to make charitable educ ational contributions to U.S. universities. Results front fixed effects ana lysis of panel data on 87 universities for the period 1986-87 to 1995-96 in dicate that year-to-year changes lit athletic success hare a positive impac t on levels of alumni giving but that other types of donors are not as resp onsive Also long-standing athletic traditions established prior to the samp le period appear to generate academic benefits bl the form of increased cha ritable donations from all sources. However, the estimated impact of a succ essful athletic tradition is relatively weak when compared to the effect of student and faculty quality on educational contributions.