One University of Washington psychiatry professor has identified a strange correlation -- schools with top-ranked ultimate Frisbee teams also have higher graduation rates.

Michael J. Norden analyzed the Ultimate Players Association's performance ratings for men and women's teams and discovered both public and private schools with top-ranked ultimate teams have higher graduation rates than schools with lower-ranked teams.

Ultimate Frisbee is a non-contact sport in which players pass a disc down the field and into an end zone to score points. Invented in the 1960s, the game is played in more than 30 countries and 500 colleges and universities, including Penn State.

Norden also found universities in the top half of ultimate standings possess more participants in the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarship programs. The top private schools possessed 208 Rhodes and Marshall scholars, the bottom schools 15, Norden said.

"There was a statistically significant relationship," he said. "I can not establish what's causing the relationship. That's open to speculation. "

In Norden's study, Penn State ranked 18th in ultimate Frisbee among the nation's public schools between 2001 and 2005, he said.

"Penn State has always done fairly well in ultimate Frisbee," he said. "It's one of the better teams."

But Norden wasn't aware of the Penn State Frisbee team's return following a one-year suspension. Currently, Penn State men's ultimate Frisbee team ranks 401 out of 524 teams and possesses an 8-5 record. The Penn State women's ultimate Frisbee team wasn't included in the Ultimate Player Association's rankings.

Penn State also possesses an overall 43.3 percent graduation rate, no Rhodes scholars since 2001 and one Marshall scholar last year.

Geoff Rushton, a university spokesman, said the research findings sounded oversimplified and exaggerated.

"The best way to build a quality institution is through investing in educational programs," he said. "We don't feel that we need a good quality Frisbee team in order to be a top institution."

Kevin Richmond, president of the Penn State's men ultimate Frisbee team, said many schools have a long history of success in ultimate Frisbee.

"During my sophomore year, we were ranked 12 in the nation," Richmond (senior-international politics and economics) said. "A lot of the Ivy League schools have long-standing traditions of ultimate Frisbee, but other teams struggle to establish a base. It's something we struggle with."

Keith Stern, Frisbee team co-captain, said he wasn't sure if an ultimate Frisbee team determined a school's quality, but he pointed out the Penn State team has a large number of athletes in the Schreyers Honors College.

"There's at least 10 honors students out of 60 team members that I know of," Stern (junior-engineering sciences) said. "I'm not sure if there's a direct correlation or just a coincidence."