The lead story in Monday's Post about our study of student attitudes and knowledge about intercollegiate athletics funding and Ohio University's General Fee has been criticized, starting with Becky Watts of the President's Office. She said, The response rate was low and was not representative of the student population. That criticism is off the mark.
SAMPLE RESPONSE RATE
Ms. Watts notes the sample was only roughly 1,000 students, about 5 percent of the study body. Before addressing that criticism, we are amused that Ms. Watts apparently thinks that something called the General Fee Advisory Committee
a group of 10 members - of whom five are directly appointed by President McDavis himself - is large enough to accurately represent all students. The legitimacy of that extremely weak argument is belied by the fact that in the committee's first year (2007) it recommended reducing ICA support by $500,000. Committee co-chair Patrick Heery was quoted in The Post that year as saying, There were a lot of concerns and reservation about our recommendation particularly with Athletics and if they could sustain the cuts ... but we were more concerned with trying to represent student interest since it is in fact our money. The recommendation was flatly ignored by the administration.
As to the sample, companies such as A.C. Nielsen measure TV audiences and pollsters evaluate campaigns with sample sizes not much larger than used here, and as a percent of the population much smaller - the Current Population Survey used in estimating unemployment rates is a sampling of about 0.04 percent of American households, for example. We have calculated the standard error for the sample, and standard statistical sampling procedures suggest there is a 95 percent probability that the true percent of students thinking that intercollegiate athletics was extremely unimportant in their admission decision is 51 percent or more - a majority.
IS THE SAMPLE REPRESENTATIVE?
Ms. Watts and others emphasize that 32 percent of the sample was graduate students. Yet the responses of the grad students varied only modestly from that of the undergraduates. On the aforementioned question about the importance of ICA in admissions, 49.3 percent of undergraduates thought it to be extremely unimportant compared to 53.7 percent for the entire sample. Removing graduate students from the sample altogether yields very little differences in responses to the other questions as well.
Ms. Watts and others also suggest that the sample was biased because respondents were less interested in Athletics than the student body at large. The data don't support that. In our study, students themselves report attending on average 5.8 ICA events annually. Based on student athletic attendance data for 2009-10, the average for the university as a whole was about three. If our sample was biased, this suggests the bias favored Athletics.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Other than advocating greater transparency regarding finances, in the study we made no recommendations. We are disappointed that the university's immediate reaction to our findings was to criticize them rather than even consider the feelings of at least 1,000 students. We are not calling for the demolition of ICA but rather an honest and informed discussion of its sustainability in this time of tough budget realities.
Richard Vedder is a distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University; David Ridpath is an assistant professor of sports administration at Ohio University; Matthew Denhart is a 2010 graduate of Ohio University and administrative director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity in Washington, D.C.
4
Opinion
Letter to the Editor
