Mythbuster: campus sustainability recruits more students than big time college sports. What to do? Green your college sports program.
By Dave Newport
OK, what does sustainability have to
do with Doug Flutie? And who is Doug Flutie, anyway?
For those readers not so fossilized that
paleontologists are already trying to identify what Giganotosaurus species you evolved
from, some quick ancient history.
Eons before Facebook--or even the Internet--it
was 1984 and Boston College was playing football vs. the University of Miami
(Florida) on national TV. In that era Miami
was a football Tyrannosaurus Rex and while BC had nearly matched UM’s teeth it
looked like Miami would crawl away the victor. UM was up 45-40 with 6 seconds
left. BC had the rock but a very long
way to go.
Then football magic happened--or
an asteroid hit the Earth.
BC’s young, undersized, untested but
promising quarterback Doug Flutie lofted the ball far downfield in a classic
“Hail Mary” heave. In those few seconds of flight time BC’s fans must have held
hands and collectively cashed in every Karma IOU they ever had; because Doug
Flutie’s pass dropped into a BC receiver’s hands to win the game for Beantown.
A few days later, college football’s highest
honor, the Heisman Trophy, was dropped into Flutie’s hands.
Then a year later, BC’s admissions office got
a flood of applications from prospective freshman all over the US. Applications soared 18% and another 15% two
years later.
Boston College was seen as moving from respected regional university
to a national brand on the strength of one great pass.
So a New Rule was born, the Flutie Effect. It goes
like this: high profile football or even basketball success leads to a boom in
enrollment applications, increased incoming SAT scores, and donations for the
winning school.
Boston College has since reported that other factors
played significant roles in these increased student applications. But no
matter, right or wrong the Flutie Effect would live long past the extinction of
the dinosaurs and provide meat for a College
Athletics Arms Race that three decades later is still expanding. Campuses today
feed their victory-hungry athletic programs with enormous sums of money,
facilities, and marketing in the hopes that victory will bring home the bacon.
These days, football juggernaut Alabama rules
the pitch and the championships, winning three of the last four. Head coach Nick Saban makes an Ice Age cool
$5+million a year, more than any coach—and his
championships deliver lots of students and money to the Crimson Tide.
And there are other more persuasive examples
like formerly unheard of Butler
University. In recent years Butler went from declining in everything to
growing everywhere on the back of a very successful basketball program and baby
faced coach, Brad Stevens. Stevens has since moved to professional basketball’s
most prized job, head coach of the storied Boston Celtics, basketball’s
winningest team.
So thirty years later, Doug Flutie’s perfect
pass warms the heart of every campus president, development officer, coach,
athletic director, and registrar.
For the sake of argument, I am going to
assume the Flutie Effect is valid even though the Knight
Commission for Intercollegiate Athletics has repeatedly stated there is no real
research that supports this widely held belief. On the contrary, they
report that the research shows no significant or lasting bump in application
numbers, incoming SAT scores or donations from the Flutie effect. The Knight Commission is made up of respected college
presidents, trustees, athletes, and sports journalists charged with watchdogging
college sports and the NCAA but it has no
real regulatory power.
Anyway, while the Knight Commission and even
Boston College dispute the validity of the Flutie Effect, enough think that it
is real—so we’re accepting it as something to reckon with.
The “Sustainability Effect?”
By now you have repeatedly asked yourself
what all this has to do with sustainability or you have stopped reading.
Raise your hand if you have stopped reading.
OK, here’s the handoff. When he played for
BC, Doug Flutie was young, relatively unknown, unheralded, cheap, full of
promise, and ultimately way good for campus brand and recruiting.
In turn, campus sustainability is young,
relatively unknown, unheralded, doesn’t cost a lot, shows lots of upside—and is
way good for campus brand and recruiting. Indeed, in this case the research
supports a “sustainability effect” on recruiting—but without the hefty price
tag of big time college sports.
Here’s a quick review of sustainability-recruiting
research reported in the last few years.
To be sure, the most widely reported “research”
on this comes from a source some are skeptical of for various reasons, Princeton Review. Their annual poll of
thousands of incoming frosh has year after year shown about two-thirds of
prospective students made their buying decision of where to attend college, in
part, based on their view of that campus’ sustainability acumen. Here’s
this year’s data:
Many say this seems like a high number.
Fair enough.
Indeed, a 2006 national study of 2,100
incoming freshman by Aramark Corporation found lower but still very significant
numbers. Interestingly, these results put sustainability above athletics in
terms of recruiting power.
Some say that’s old data and that this level
of interest does not hold anymore for those schools where sustainability is not
part of the core brand.
Perhaps.
Yet a more recent 2008 UCLA study of 240,500 first-year,
full-time students at 340 four-year institutions indicated that 45
percent of students said that campus adoption of green practices to protect the
environment was essential or very important. Not sure if that work has been
updated since 2008--but it's a huge sample size across a lot of campuses.
Then there is a 2012 survey conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute that found that 26.5 percent
of entering students (from 283 institutions surveyed) reported feeling it is
“essential” or “very important” to help clean up the environment. Close to 40
percent of first-year students believe it is “very important” or “essential” to
adopt green practices to protect the environment.
OK, skeptics might say, that’s just a feel
good.
Well, the University of Michigan—one
of the nation’s top athletic programs--polled its incoming freshman last
year. They were asked
to rate the statement:
“UM's commitment to
sustainability was an important factor influencing my decision to attend
Michigan.” The results:
·
Essential: 6.5%
·
Very important: 20.2%
·
Somewhat important: 37.8%
·
Not important: 34.1%
It’s hard to summarize these data because the
questions are different than others, but it looks like about 27% found
sustainability very important or essential to their choice. That number matches the UCLA and Aramark data
very well. But if we count the other 37.8% that found it “somewhat important,”
then sustainability appears to have at least been on the minds of about
two-thirds of incoming freshman at the University of Michigan. That number is
more like the Princeton Review data.
I don’t know how that compares to UM’s
attractiveness because of its athletic prowess, but it’s not bad. By the way, UM
will spend $137.5 million on athletics this year—and net over $8.9 million
in profit, one of only
a handful of athletic programs to make money. It would be interesting to
compare UM’s sustainability budget with athletics in terms of recruiting power
per dollar spent.
On my campus, football has, well, been better
in the past—but basketball has successfully pushed onto the national scene over
the last few years. Likewise, sustainability has been a strength at CU Boulder
for a long time. It is definitely part of our core brand and is highly visible on the front page of the campus
website. In 2012 we polled our incoming freshman with this question:
Please indicate your level of agreement with
the following statements: - CU's sustainability reputation and/or
sustainability academic programs factored in to my decision to attend CU (rate
1-6 as follows):
·
20.05% = 1 - Strongly disagree
·
14.29% = 2
·
24.31% = 3
·
16.54% = 4
·
12.28% = 5
·
12.53% = 6 - Strongly agree
We added responses 4-6 and concluded about 41%
weighed sustainability in their decision more or less. So, we are somewhere in
the middle of the ranges reported in the research.
What about schools without strong athletic
programs? Well, no offense to the great people there, but Tufts University
probably would not intimidate a lot of traditional college sports powers.
Nonetheless, they do have a rock
solid sustainability program and peerless
history. Their president convened the Talloires
conference in 1990 and was its first signatory. Indeed, they were doing
sustainability before it was cool. When I started working on the sustainability effort at
the University of Florida back in the 1990s, Tufts was already an accomplished leader.
And they have not stepped back from that commitment.
So, if any campus has a quality sustainability
story to tell to prospective freshman, it is Tufts. And how sexy is
sustainability in Somerville? Here are last year’s results:
So, quick summary:
Summary of Sustainability’s Influence on College Choice*
|
|
Data
Source
|
Percent
freshman indicating some level of preference for a sustainable campus
|
Princeton Review (2013)
|
62%
|
Aramark (2006)
|
23-34%
|
UCLA 2008
|
45%
|
UCLA 2012
|
26.5-40%
|
University of Michigan (2012)
|
27-64%
|
University of Colorado Boulder
(2012)
|
41%
|
Tufts University (2012)
|
37%
|
* NOTE: This table is a summary of data but not a comparative
analysis. Questions, sample size, methodology vary from source
to source.
|
|
Bottom line: sustainability is still a hot campus-recruiting
tool.
Sustainability effect and risk
Another recent UCLA study found a lot of factors
influence students’ decisions of where to invest four years and tens of
thousands of dollars. Happily, academic
reputation shows up at the top of most of the reports scanned for this
article. Athletics is down the list, Flutie effect notwithstanding.
Sustainability shows up as described above; anywhere from 27 to 66% of students
list it as a factor. That would put it somewhere between number 9 and number 1
on the list of selection drivers in the UCLA study above. Let’s say the Flutie
effect is in there somewhere too.
So in these days of shrinking campus budgets
and multiple campus selection influencers, where would be the least risky, most
efficient place to invest in recruiting prospective freshmen?
Well, suppose a campus pours hundreds of
millions of dollars into winning at football and basketball—and gets a
recruiting bump. Great! Now, how many
campuses can do this? Not a lot. Half of them cannot have winning records; the
arithmetic says for every winner there’s a loser. And how many can afford it?
The list is getting shorter. And how much room is there at the top of sports
rankings? Is Alabama going to step aside? Stanford? Michigan? What are the odds
of being the next Cinderella like Butler?
So for a campus trying to get onto the plus
side of the Flutie Effect the risk may be very high. Big money. Big gamble.
Only a few make it into the top tiers and fewer yet will break even or make
money. If a campus signs up for the big show they better win.
On the other hand, what happens if a campus
funds a sustainability program with far, far less money—and it doesn’t work?
Well, first off I have never heard of a sustainability program that didn’t work—some
are just more productive than others. Results are generally proportional to
leadership support, funding, and local conditions.
But say they did fall short at
sustainability? The financial risk is tiny. No big coaching contracts buyouts.
No media black eye. No scandals. Indeed, the surviving effects of their efforts
might still include energy cost savings, less waste, better community
relations, happier students, better brand, etc.
Likewise, any campus can sign up for
sustainability. They don’t even need an athletics program. If they do have one,
that’s another place where sustainability can embed and help the campus. New
research is showing the tremendous potential for fan engagement behind
sports sustainability, for instance. More is on the way.
Other interesting evolutions include new,
integrated sports and sustainability marketing programs aimed at leveraging sustainability
with college sports visibility. This is opening new doors—and prospective
sponsors’ eyes to the value of a sustainable campus and all the places to
connect. As reported recently by the IEG
Sponsorship Report:
“BASF Corp. [recently activated] its new partnership with the
University of Michigan Athletics to support its corporate platforms of
sustainability and innovation. The program includes the Team Chemistry Most
Valuable Player Award, a monthly award that acknowledges one group in the
athletic department that embodies the best qualities of team chemistry both on
and off the field.
The chemical giant also activates the tie with the BASF Team
Chemistry Challenge, a promotion that offers students the opportunity to lessen
the environmental impact of home games. Entries will be judged by the school
and BASF representatives, with the two organizations distributing $25,000 to the
winning teams.
“The relationship between BASF and U-M will actively engage the
students and the surrounding community to demonstrate how chemistry creates a
sustainable future,” said Greg Pflum, BASF North America’s vice president and
general manager—Midwest hub, in a statement.”
Beautiful. Go Blue!
Sports or sustainability?
I love sports, all kinds. High school,
college, pro, international, Olympics, it’s all good. Sports is the world’s biggest
platform for social integration and cultural understanding and the highly
visible “front porch” of a campus. Sport is an experience offering lifelong
lessons and strength of character, and a community-building vehicle that brings
people of all stripe together for a few moments to enjoy its art, beauty,
talent, competition, camaraderie, and excellence.
At its best, sport is sublime. I still
remember where I was when the USA hockey team beat the
Soviet Union in the 1980 Olympics. I screamed for days then and years later
I cried at the movie
about it. “Do you believe in miracles?”
Yes!
Integrating sustainability into sport is a
no-brainer. Brings out the best in both. I love competing with other campuses on game day
sustainability, then working with all to share ideas and information. Competition breeds inspiration.
It’s not a choice between sports and
sustainability. Campuses should do both as best they can. There are over 4,000
campuses in the United States. For those campuses without the wallet or desire
to join the athletics arms race, sustainability is right there. For campuses
with the juice, sustainability can be an even bigger factor in success.
“Let’s face
it. America is a nation of sports fanatics, and for all of us who eat, sleep,
and breathe sports, environmental stewardship should be a top priority,” said
Missy Franklin, four-time Olympic gold medalist and incoming freshman student
athlete at the University of California Berkley.
“As [the
NRDC] report shows, collegiate sports programs are recognizing this and taking
control of their own sustainability.”
So move over Doug Flutie, we are now entering a new age where the young bucks
understand that sports + sustainability = the future.
Game on!
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