Thesis documents how sports impact earnings

Danielle Goldberg

Recent Lafayette College graduate Danielle Goldberg of Marlboro was a member of the women's soccer team her first two years on the Easton, Pa., campus. But when she stopped playing soccer at the end of her sophomore year, she began noticing changes in those around her.

"The beginning of my junior year marked my transition from a student-athlete to a non-athlete, and I started to notice the differences in personality and character between my athlete and non-athlete friends," explains Goldberg, who graduated on May 19 with an A.B. with majors in economics, and business and psychology.

"When I began to search for internships and full-time jobs, I recognized that employers were more interested in my experiences as a college athlete rather than what I had learned during previous internships. In fact, most of my interviews were spent talking about what it was like to be a soccer player in college. As a result, I became interested in quantifying the future impact of participation in intercollegiate athletics in terms of career success," she said.

Her curiosity surrounding the differences between college students and college student-athletes became the basis for her honors thesis titled "The Impact of College Athletics on Career Success" in which Goldberg looked beyond classroom performance.

"A novel feature of this thesis is exploring the long-term outcomes as opposed to outcomes while in school, such as grades or graduation rates," she says. "It investigated whether participation in intercollegiate athletics impedes upon or leads to greater career success relative to those students who choose not to participate."

To measure this, Goldberg used an econometric model that quantifies the future impact of a college athlete's experiences. The model is estimated using a rich longitudinal data set that includes a base-year survey and four follow-up surveys taken from a nationally representative sample from 1988 through 2000. In addition, the main explanatory variable of interest is whether each participant plays college athletics. Other variables are taken into account in the model such as high school athletic participation, drive, social adjustment indicators, goal progress, family life, job satisfaction, sex, and socioeconomic status. The measures of long-term success - the dependent variable - are the annual earnings and level of job satisfaction in the year 2000.

"Using a very large national sample, she found that five years after graduation, college athletes earn about 10 percent more than non-athletes, even after controlling for a host of other factors that also influence earnings differences," explains Mark Crain, Simon Professor of Political Economy, who served as Goldberg's honors thesis adviser. "She also finds other measures of career success to be higher for college athletes than for non-athletes."

Goldberg said Lafayette's professors provide a great environment for undergraduate research, and they are dedicated to helping their students succeed. She believes she benefited greatly from Crain's guidance.

"He not only challenged me to work to my fullest potential, but also motivated me when things became stressful," she said. "Writing a thesis is an experience unlike any other, and Dr. Crain's assistance helped to turn it into an intellectually stimulating and exciting endeavor."

In July, Goldberg will begin working as a human capital management consultant for IBM. She will use systems, applications and products to help other companies improve the quality and strategic value of their human resources services. This will involve enhancing their organizational structure, data warehousing and developing customer relations by implementing enterprise resource planning systems.

Crain said Goldberg's experience with her honors thesis will help her as she begins her professional career. For instance, the analytical tools she used in her thesis have unlimited applications in the workplace.

"The ability to write clearly and concisely is a rare and highly valued skill by many employers," he said. "The thesis required her to assess constantly the significance of her findings, how these findings related to existing work, and whether she was, in fact, making an original contribution to our knowledge. What findings are new and how are they important? These are skills that only come with practice, and Danielle has spent the better part of the past year practicing them."

Goldberg is a graduate of Marlboro High School.

This article was provided by Lafayette College.