GEEZ is pleased to present you the 2021-22 Job Market Candidates in the Economics of Education! We will update this blog post regularly as we receive more abstracts! Right now, there are 25 abstracts.
Simon ter Meulen (University of Amsterdam)
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/simontermeulen/home
JMP: Long-term effects of grade retention
Abstract: Grade retention offers students a chance to catch up with unmastered material but also leads to less labor market experience by delaying graduation and labor market entry. This paper assesses this trade-off by using a test-based promotion cutoff in academic secondary school in the Netherlands. I find no impact of retaining on final educational attainment, although retained students are later to graduate. Grade retention does lead to an annual earnings loss of about 3,100 euros (-14%) at age 28. This loss is entirely due to the difference in experience created by the delayed labor market entry, as starting earnings and earnings trajectories are not affected. Overall, there seems no benefit of grade retention for students around the cutoff.
Cora Wigger (Northwestern University)
Website: www.corawigger.com
JMP: Decoupling Homes and Schools: Assessing the Impact of Forced School Choice on Residential Change
Abstract: Many school choice policies provide exit options from neighborhood schools, but still allow families to guarantee access to desirable neighborhood schools by living within the school boundaries. Alternatively, forced school choice more fully decouples homes and schools by removing default neighborhood school options. Here, I examine how one forced choice policy that merged neighborhood school boundaries into larger bundles of school options with no single default impacted residential change. I exploit the quasi-randomness of the timing of the policy change by comparing properties and neighborhoods that were zoned earlier to those that were zoned later, examining effects separately for homes that were decoupled from higher and lower rated schools. My results suggest that neighborhoods decoupled from higher-rated schools experience decreases in housing values, the share of white and college-educated residents, and median family income. Neighborhoods previously linked to lower rated schools experienced relatively little direct change from the policy. These results stand in contrast to past work examining the residential effects of other forms of schools choice that offer exit options.
Ahmad Shah Mobariz (University of Arkansas)
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ahmadshahmobariz/home
JMP: Foreign Military Withdrawal, Male Migration, and Female Education
Abstract: Foreign military withdrawal from occupation is an economic and political shock to the host nation. This paper studies the effect of a major foreign troop evacuation on females' demand for higher education in Afghanistan. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. launched the War on Terror campaign that led to the collapse of the Taliban regime and the installation of a democratic system in Afghanistan. After a decade of military occupation, between 2011-2015, the United States implemented a conditions-based transfer of security responsibilities to local security forces and evacuation of international troops. I exploit geographic and topographic barriers for the shipment of military equipment from Afghanistan's districts to regional military airbases as the source of variation for physical repatriations of troops. I use the least-cost travel distance between districts and the nearest logistic hub as an IV for the departure of forces. Withdrawal of foreign forces resulted in a 0.3 percentage points increase in female university participation from a base value of 0.05%, while male participation did not change. I show that vanishing economic opportunities and massive male emigration explain this difference.
Marco Pariguana (University of Western Ontario)
Website: https://www.marcopariguana.com/
JMP: School Choice, Mismatch, and Graduation
Abstract: In all centralized education systems, some schools experience excess demand. A standard solution to the excess demand problem is to ration seats using admission priorities. This paper studies the effects of changing the priority structure in the centralized high school admission system in Mexico City. Academically elite schools experience excess demand in this system, while admission priorities are based on a standardized admission exam. The system ignores other skill measures such as Grade Point Average (GPA), which may better capture non-cognitive skills that are important for later education and life-cycle outcomes. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD), we first show that marginal admission to an elite school decreases the graduation probability for students with below-median GPA and increases it for students with above-median GPA. Guided by this evidence, we then study the effects of a counterfactual admission policy wherein elite schools define a priority index that flexibly combines information on both the admission exam and the middle school overall GPA. Our counterfactual results show that more females and lower-income students would be admitted to elite schools, and the graduation rate at elite schools would increase by six percentage points. Overall, our findings show that including the information contained in GPA to define a priority structure improves equity of access, decreases mismatch, and increases graduation.
Elisa Taveras (Binghamton University)
Website: https://elisataveras.com/
JMP: An Unintended Effect of School Entrance Age: Pushing Children Ahead through Private School
Abstract: Does a child’s birth date affect his or her probability of attending a private school? In the United States, most children must be five years old by September to start public kindergarten. An alternative option is to attend private schools, which are not obliged to comply with states’ cutoffs. To explore this, I look at the effect of children’s quarter of birth on their probability of attending private school by grade (pre-kindergarten through 12th grade). Using the American Community Survey, I find that children born in July–September and October–December are more likely to attend private kindergarten than children born between April and June. The effect does not persist at higher grades. These findings indicate that, when limited by the entrance age cutoff, parents use private schools to bypass the restriction, giving their children a head start on schooling, and later transfer them to public school as they progress through K–12.
Yun Xiao (University of Amsterdam)
Website: https://www.yunxiao.nl/
Abstract: This paper studies the heterogeneity in the trade-off between child quantity and different dimensions of child quality. I test how parents adjust investments in their firstborn children's health, education, and wealth in response to changes in child quantity. I then check whether there is heterogeneity across parental occupations for each dimension of child quality. To identify an exogenous change in child quantity, I use variation in the strictness of fertility restrictions in rural China. I find that stricter fertility restrictions reduce the number of siblings and improve the health of all children with parents in different occupations. But the impacts on other dimensions of child quality vary significantly by parental occupation. In response to stricter fertility restrictions, only parents in high-skill occupations invest more in their firstborn children's education. Farmers pass on more land, while low-skill workers transfer more financial and housing assets to their firstborn children. The heterogeneous responses to a reduction in child quantity have consequences for labor market outcomes and intergenerational income mobility. While children of farmers and low-skill workers experience little change in labor market outcomes, children of high-skill workers are more likely to work in a high-skill job and earn a higher income when having fewer siblings.
Matthew Collins (Lund University)
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/matthewcollins-econ
Abstract: I study how sibling gender affects the education outcomes of children and how these effects vary across ethnic groups with different customary inheritance norms. Using data from 27 Sub-Saharan African countries, I identify the causal effect of having a second-born brother rather than a sister on the education of first-born children. Boys who inherit their father's property experience no effect of sibling gender, while there is a significant negative effect of having a brother for boys who do not. Girls experience a small negative effect of having a brother relative to a sister, regardless of inheritance norms. These results suggest that parents substitute between transferring property to their children and investing in their education. Exploiting quasi-random variation in national reforms, I show that legally guaranteeing that inheritances are passed to children and reducing the cost of schooling reduce the negative effect of having a brother. These findings underline the importance of culture in determining the outcomes of children and the role policy can play in counteracting undesirable cultural practices.
Rene Crespin (Cornell University)
Website: https://www.renecrespin.com/
JMP: The Value of School Social Climate Information: Evidence from Chicago Housing Transactions
Abstract: For the past decade, the federal government and an increasing number of states and school districts across the US have begun to invest and focus on the social, learning, and working conditions (school climate) experienced by students, families, and teachers. Despite this trend, causal research on whether and how much various stakeholders value school climate is limited. In this paper, I investigate how publicizing school climate information is capitalized into the housing market and how it affects the sorting of homebuyers from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Using a plausibly exogenous shock of school climate information in Chicago, I employ event studies and a difference-in-differences framework. I find that providing this information publicly leads to an overall house price increase of 2% for a one-level-higher school climate rating. Additionally, I find a 2% increase in the average income of new homebuyers moving into neighborhoods assigned to a one-level-higher school climate rating. These effects are almost entirely driven by transactions in attendance zones with better-climate schools. These initial effects dissipate over time, as information becomes less salient. The effects are consistent across different types of schools and neighborhoods. I explore various potential mechanisms for these effects. I find evidence that homebuyers value this dimension of school quality that has been understudied in the revealed preferences literature.
Laëtitia Renée (McGill University)
Website: https://www.laetitiarenee.com/
JMP: The Long-Term Effects of Financial Aid and Career Education: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
Abstract: Despite large investments in interventions aiming to increase college attendance, little is known about their long-term effects. In this paper, I study the effects of the Future to Discover Project, a randomized experiment that offered 4,400 Canadian high school students either the chance to participate in several career planning workshops in high school or the chance to receive an $8,000 grant upon college enrollment. I match the experimental data to post-secondary institution records and income tax files to examine the effects of the interventions on college enrollment, graduation, and earnings, from the end of high school till the age of 28. I show that the career education intervention, by affecting students’ decisions to enroll in four-year colleges, greatly improved their outcomes in the long run. In contrast, I do not find any evidence that providing students with additional financial support had any long-term monetary benefits, which is consistent with the fact that a number of grants and loans are already available in Canada. My findings also shed light on the mechanisms explaining the gap in educational attainment by parental income. I show that informational and behavioral barriers, rather than financial constraints, together with differences in academic achievement, account for most of the gap in four-year college graduation between high- and low-income students.
W. Jesse Wood (Michigan State University)
Website: https://www.wjessewood.com
JMP: The Student-Teacher Race Match Effect on Learning Skills and Behavioral Outcomes
Abstract: I provide evidence that diversifying the labor supply of teachers to better reflect the racial distribution of students increases learning and behavioral outcomes for students of color without diminishing outcomes for white students. I use administrative data spanning from 2007 to 2017 within the Los Angeles Unified School District, one of the most racially diverse school districts in the country, to measure the effect of student-teacher race matching on various noncognitive outcomes. I mitigate the concern that race matches are endogenous by including school-grade and student fixed effects into a linear regression model. This setting accounts for any potential sorting that occurs across schools with regards to the racial distribution of teachers as well as any unobserved time invariant student characteristics that may be correlated with race matching. Following a similar method from Jackson (2018), I generate a behavior index (using suspensions, absences, and grade retention) and a learning skills index (using GPA, marks for work habits, and marks for cooperation) for each student and find that race matched students in grades 6 through 12 are expected to increase in their behavioral index by 0.041 standard deviations and increases in their learning skills index by 0.011 standard deviations. My findings indicate that students of color also experience increases in the individual components of GPA, work habits, and cooperation and see decreases in absenteeism when matched with a teacher of the same race. I do not find statistically significant effects on any of these outcomes for White students. Because noncognitive outcomes lead to higher high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, and wages (Heckman et al.,2013; Heckman et al., 2012; Jackson, 2018), such effects could lead to a tightening in the achievement and wage gap found between students of color and white students. This result can be achieved with an increase in institutional efforts attract and hire people of color into the teaching profession.
Benjamin W. Arold (LMU Munich and ifo Institute)
Website: https://benjamin-arold.mystrikingly.com
JMP: Evolution vs. Creationism in the Classroom: The Lasting Effects of Science Education
Abstract: Anti-scientific attitudes can impose substantial costs on societies. Can schools be an important agent in mitigating the propagation of such attitudes? This paper investigates the effect of the content of science education on anti-scientific attitudes, knowledge, and choices. The analysis exploits staggered reforms reducing or expanding the coverage of evolution theory in US state science education standards. I compare adjacent cohorts in models with state and cohort fixed effects and conduct fine-grained placebo tests to rule out scientific, religious and political confounders. There are three main results. First, expanded evolution coverage increases students’ knowledge about evolution. Second, the reforms translate into evolution approval in adulthood, but do not crowd out religiosity or affect political attitudes. Third, the reforms affect high-stakes life decisions, namely the probability to work in life sciences.
Shawn Martin (University of Michigan - Ann Arbor)
Website: https://www.shawn-michele-martin.com
JMP: Job Search and Earnings Growth: General and Specific Majors
Abstract: This paper studies whether earnings growth varies with the specificity of a college major and quantifies the importance of job search in this process. I find that shortly after graduation specific majors (graduates with skills that are more tailored to particular occupations) earn 18% more than graduates with general majors. By thirteen years post graduation, the gap shrinks by two-thirds to 6%. I create a novel linkage of two nationally representative surveys and administrative earnings records. I find that general majors switch occupations upwards of 50% more often than specific majors and also change employer and industry 20-30% more often. These patterns are consistent with a simple model of job search in which college majors differ in how tailored their skills are to particular occupations and it is relatively harder for general majors to find good job matches. An accounting exercise suggests that 30-50% of the explainable part of the earnings-growth difference between general and specific majors is accounted for by differences in employer and industry changes.
Jessica Wagner (University of Toronto)
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/jessicawagner
JMP: The Effects of Student Exposure to Proactive Policing: Evidence from Los Angeles Gang Injunctions
Abstract: While more police have been found to reduce crime, growing evidence indicates that policies to increase police presence and authority place a heavy burden on targeted communities. How that burden is borne by children remains an open question. In this paper, I estimate the causal effects of a proactive policing program in Los Angeles on the education outcomes of children in kindergarten to grade eight. I leverage the staggered and plausibly exogenous timing of civil gang injunctions and a panel of student administrative data to estimate the effects of new gang injunctions on academic and behavioural outcomes using an event study approach. I document substantial heterogeneity in the effects of the policy, which enhanced police authority to arrest suspected gang members inside `safety zones'. Four years after gang-injunction implementation, female English-learner students -- likely first- or second-generation immigrants -- see academic gains of 14 percent of a standard deviation in math and 12 percent of a standard deviation in English test scores compared to never exposed students. In stark contrast, male non-English-learner students suffer declines of 11 percent of a standard deviation in math and 13 percent of a standard deviation in English test scores, along with sharp increases in suspensions. Declines in reported crime, which reduce Hispanic female victimization, are a key mechanism driving the gains for female English-learner students, based on a variance decomposition exercise. Though this targeted strategy was effective in reducing crime and improving academic progress for many, ongoing and future policing initiatives must consider how to mitigate the collateral damage inflicted on at-risk children.
Andrea Salvati (Rice University)
Website: https://www.andreasalvati.com/
Abstract: This paper develops and estimates an equilibrium model of endogenous instruction and student effort to empirically investigate the relationship between instructional choices, classroom composition, and student achievement. The model allows teachers to vary in instructional ability and to value differently the achievement of students with different levels of prior knowledge. Using a unique dataset that combines school administrative data with rich information on instructional practices from five US school districts, I find that teachers attach a higher value to the achievement of students at lower quantiles of the distribution. I further explore the model's implications by simulating a counterfactual scenario where I track students into classrooms based on prior test score performance. Results show that tracking has heterogeneous effects on students with different levels of prior knowledge. Moreover, the distribution of these effects depends on the mechanism used to assign teachers to classrooms. In particular, the combination of tracking with the assignment of high-ability teachers to lower tracks would benefit students at the bottom tercile of the distribution despite the lower level of peer quality.
Valentina Martinez-Pabon, Tulane University
Website: https://vmp1.github.io/
JMP: https://vmp1.github.io/assets/docs/VMP_JMP_Nov2021.pdf
Abstract: No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the state accountability systems implemented during the 1990s have included an increasingly intense series of interventions for low-performing schools. If the initial steps were insufficient, schools were supposed to be closed, taken over by other education organizations, or reconstituted. Using an event study analysis, I find that state accountability and NCLB itself did not affect the frequency of closure and takeover of publicly funded schools in the country. Moreover, I find that NCLB generated an anticipatory but transitory increase in closures and led to a rise in closures among schools with small enrollments. Overall, my findings suggest that the infrequent and weak implementation of the most extreme sanctions on low-performing schools is partly behind the limited effects of accountability policies on student performance.
Sandra Spirovska (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Website: https://www.spirovska.com
JMP: Migration Opportunities, College Enrollment and College Major Choice
Abstract: I explore how migration opportunities affect college enrollment and major choice in migrant-sending countries in the presence of open borders. My identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in migration costs during the 2004 European Union (EU) enlargement to compare enrollment in newly admitted sending countries and incumbent destination countries. I use microlevel data from the EU Labor Force Survey and an event study framework to show that college enrollment in new states increased 15-25% in anticipation of better migration opportunities, and up to 30% once borders opened. College students in new states were more likely to enroll in college majors related to occupations with labor shortages in destination countries. To disentangle the effects of migration costs and wages on enrollment, I develop a model of college major choice with a migration option. Counterfactual policy experiments indicate that sending country enrollment is highly sensitive to migration penalties, but less sensitive to domestic college wage increases.
Tatiana Velasco Rodriguez (Teachers College, Columbia University)
Website: https://tativelasco.com
Abstract: How does the desegregation of elite schools impact academic achievement? How does it affect students' interactions within schools? In this paper, I study a natural experiment at an elite university in Colombia where the number of low-income students unexpectedly tripled. The change was driven by the forgivable loan program Ser Pilo Paga. I exploit the variation in the percentage of low-income students across degree majors and within entry cohorts to measure the effects of exposure to desegregation on students' achievement. Having 9.5 percentage points more low-income peers had modest to null impacts on wealthy students' academic performance. To assess the role of social interactions, I use novel data on students' co-movements across campus as captured by turnstiles located at all entrances. Increasing exposure to desegregation led to increased connections between wealthy and low-income students of 0.5 standard deviations. At least half of the increase in interactions between wealthy and low-income students is explained by interactions of wealthy with low-income high-achieving students. These results are consistent with a theoretical framework where students diversify their interactions by matching by academic achievement, such that adverse peer effects are avoided.
Ellen Greaves (University of Bristol)
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ellengreaves/home
JMP: The Importance of School Quality Ratings for School Choices: Evidence from a Nationwide System
Abstract: Choosing a school is one of the most consequential decisions that parents make for their child. This paper answers the question of to what extent parents respond to information about schools' education standards, and whether heterogeneity in parents' responses leads to increased segregation between providers. We use plausibly exogenous variation in the timing of school inspections around the deadline for school choices to identify the pure information effect on parental decisions. We find that parents' school choices respond significantly to information revealed from these inspections. For example, revealing a one-unit increase in inspection rating before the deadline increases the number of households that choose the school as "first choice" by 1.5 (4%). This increase in demand from the revelation of positive information is non-trivial for schools. For example, translated into per-pupil funding, this increase would be equivalent to one-third of a newly qualified teacher's salary. We find that schools serving all populations have incentives to improve education standards to attract pupils. First, effects are similar for schools across the local market hierarchy. Second, effects are similar for households across the income distribution. Therefore, we do not find any effects of information provision on segregation.
Katherine McElroy (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Website: https://www.katherinemcelroy.com
JMP: Paid to Go Up the Ladder? Compensation and the Decision to Become a School Leader
Abstract: Examining job transitions into management positions is empirically challenging because there is selection into the job, both by the employee and the employer. I take advantage of a performance-based pay scheme for teachers, assistant principals, and principals to study the relationship between salary and teacher transitions to the assistant principalship. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find teachers are more likely to become assistant principals or exit the district public school system when they receive an evaluation score placing them just below the cutoff of a higher evaluation bin. Just missing the threshold for a higher evaluation bin may affect teacher career decisions through channels such as motivation, demand-driven factors, and salary. I employ a difference-in-discontinuity methodology to isolate the effect of salary on job transitions and conclude the main result is driven by salary. Understanding factors that influence teachers' decisions to stay in teaching or switch to administration has important policy implications as schools balance between attracting effective leaders and retaining high quality teachers.
Monica Mogollon Plazas (Rutgers University)
Website: https://www.monicamogollonp.com/
Abstract: We construct a novel longitudinal dataset from administrative records to examine the impact of selective college education on asset accumulation, consumer credit usage, as well as short and long-term earnings. Our empirical strategy is a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that employs the admission policies of a selective public university in Colombia, relying solely on the national high school exit examination scores. Scoring above the admission threshold has no short-term effect but raises access to consumer credit by 4 percent and earnings by 24 percent eight years after college entry. While the gains in consumer credit stabilize after 11 years after college entrance, earnings returns keep growing up to 32 percent 16 years after college entry. The impacts on asset acquisition take longer to emerge as admission raises the likelihood of homeownership by 12 percent when individuals are 30 to 35 years old. Students admitted to the selective university reported more days with formal jobs per year, hinting that better earnings and employment outcomes likely contribute to gains in credit market access. The results on financial indicators shed light on the college education impact on dimensions such as durable purchases and financial inclusion describing economic wellbeing in the long term.
Carolina Lopez (Brown University)
Website: https://www.jcarolinalopez.com
Abstract: Even in contexts where access to education is not the main barrier for educational achievement, completion rates can be low. In Argentina, more than 90 percent of teenagers are enrolled in upper secondary school, but only 50 percent graduate on time. I conducted a field experiment in Salta, Argentina, to test if lack of information about how inputs translate into outputs may prevent students who attend classes until the last day of high school from getting their diploma. To measure the relative importance of this treatment, I conducted a returns to education information intervention in a separate treatment arm. Providing information about the probability of graduation conditional on current standing and discussing intermediate steps to translate effort during the senior year of high school into graduation raises timely high school graduation by 5 percentage points, a 10 percent increase relative to the control group. Poor-performing students at baseline respond most to the treatment. The returns to education arm increases graduation rates by 10 percentage points. Point estimates suggest that targeting this different margin leads to treatment effects 50 percent of the returns to education treatment. Both treatments increase the probability of university enrollment by 5 percentage points (more than 30 percent relative to the control group). These findings indicate that inaccurate beliefs about own future performance explain a significant share of the "graduation gap".
Matteo Magnaricotte (Northwestern University)
Website: https://sites.northwestern.edu/mmy4981/
JMP: College Expansion and Unequal Access to Education in Peru
Abstract: Enrollment gaps are pervasive in developing countries, despite public investment and legislation aimed at democratizing access to college. We study the effects of opening new college campuses in underserved areas, a commonly proposed policy to reduce such gaps. Using Peruvian census data to estimate a difference in differences model, we find that enrollment increased by about 1p.p. or 10% in the short term. However, estimated effects for minority students are only half the size of others, widening preexisting gaps.
To understand the drivers of this result, we assemble a new administrative dataset on college applications and build a model of education demand with heterogeneity in preferences and probability of admission. The results show that the interaction of initial advantage and meritocratic criteria increases educational inequality: even though proximity is highly valued by less-advantaged students, meritocratic admission criteria hinder poor and minority students, who disproportionately attend lower-quality high schools. Our counterfactuals show that addressing high school quality disparities is more likely to reduce college enrollment inequality than further supply expansions.
Stephanie Bonds (University of California, Berkeley)
Website: https://stephaniebonds.com
Abstract: Secondary school dropout rates are high in low-income countries, and information gaps about school characteristics may be an important contributing factor. If school choices are made with imperfect information, households may choose schools that are too expensive, not a good fit academically, or too costly to commute to, increasing the likelihood of the students dropping out. These information gaps may be further exacerbated when students and parents fail to communicate before making high stakes schooling decisions. I study the importance of these information and communication gaps in the transition from primary to secondary school using a field experiment with 3,000 Kenyan students and their parents. The intervention consisted of an informational meeting for 8th graders before they applied to secondary school, and randomly varied whether the parent participated in the meeting for a facilitated conversation with the student. I find that informational meetings with students led them to apply to more commutable schools without compromising school quality. Moreover, including the parents in these meetings improved parental knowledge about costs and led to better alignment of school preferences between the students and their parents. This ultimately led students to enroll in lower cost schools, generating meaningful savings, particularly for low income households.
Nino Doghonadze (Pennsylvania State University)
Website: https://www.ninodoghonadze.com
JMP: Depth versus Breadth: Field Specialization in High School
Abstract: The timing of human capital specialization varies considerably across the world. While early specialization leads to depth in field-specific knowledge, late specialization may help students find which field they like by maintaining exposure to a greater breadth of options. This paper quantifies the change in student welfare when switching from a depth-oriented to a breadth-oriented system. To do so, I leverage a policy experiment in the country of Georgia. The policy imposed generalist high school (HS) graduation exams and forced the students to generalize more than they used to. Compared to the pilot cohort, the cohort that began HS with advance notice of the policy demonstrated broader subject knowledge, applied to more diverse fields in college, and was subject to changing competition for college programs across fields. To quantify the welfare impact of the policy, I develop and estimate a dynamic structural model of gradual specialization in HS. The key ingredients of the model are endogenous skill formation, field match uncertainty, and learning by experimentation. Policy simulations with estimated parameters and observed changes in competition across fields indicate that the policy increased average HS graduate welfare by at most an amount equivalent to 0.6% of the present discounted value of average wages. However, policy welfare effects are not uniform: students with higher general academic ability enjoy moderate utility gains but students with lower general academic ability experience significant losses.
Hammad Shaikh (University of Toronto)
Website: https://shaikhhammad.com/
JMP: Improving Online Learning Through Course Design: A Microeconomic Approach
Abstract: Online education has expanded dramatically over the past two decades, yet significant learning challenges remain. In light of these, my paper provides the first microeconomic analysis to examine how the quality of online university courses can be enhanced through course design. First, I gather rich data covering 3,700 undergraduates at a large public university taking an online introductory programming course that has a cumulative structure. The data allow me to monitor students' study time precisely and to characterize important dimensions of heterogeneity: student attentiveness and whether they are forward-looking. I then conduct two randomized interventions that nudge students to utilize an online discussion board more fully and to complete online assignments. I find that an additional 4.5 weeks of discussion board utilization increases final exam grades by 0.07 SD and completing one extra online assignment (out of 10 in total) raises final grades by 0.18 SD. I then develop and estimate a behavioural model of student effort supply, credibly identifying the marginal benefits and costs of effort at each stage of the cumulative learning process using the two field experiments. The estimated model allows me to explore the efficacy of changing assignment grading weights to improve student learning. In contrast to the actual (equally-weighted) grading scheme, simulated weights that maximize learning are decreasing across assignments, serving to increase effort by myopic students early in the course when they acquire foundational skills. My course-design approach is applicable more generally in other online and traditional course settings.
To be continued!
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