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Is college remedial education a worthy investment? New evidence from a sharp regression discontinuity design

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  • Duchini, Emma

Abstract

To enhance college completion, many institutions have introduced college remedial programs. Yet, till now there is little evidence that this policy helps raise students’ persistence and performance in college. To better understand how to design cost-effective remedial education, this paper studies the impact of an intervention implemented in an undergraduate economics program in Italy. This remedial policy aims at raising students’ effort and performance by combining a short remedial course with the threat of re-enrolling them in the first year in case of a failure in the remedial exam. To estimate causal effects, I implement a sharp regression discontinuity design that exploits the cutoff rule used to assign students to remediation. Results indicate that this nudge-type policy fails to obtain any positive and significant effect on either persistence or performance in college.

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  • Duchini, Emma, 2017. "Is college remedial education a worthy investment? New evidence from a sharp regression discontinuity design," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 36-53.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:60:y:2017:i:c:p:36-53
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.06.004
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    Cited by:

    1. Angela Boatman & Susana Claro & Matias Fresard & Jenna W. Kramer, 2022. "Do Corequisite Math Courses Improve Academic Outcomes in Technical Colleges?: Evidence from Chile," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 63(3), pages 453-480, May.
    2. De Benedetto, Marco Alberto & De Paola, Maria & Scoppa, Vincenzo & Smirnova, Janna, 2022. "The long-run effects of college remedial education," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    3. Francisco Pedraja-Chaparro & Daniel Santín & Rosa Simancas, 2022. "Show me the money! The impact of a conditional cash transfer on educational achievement," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(5), pages 2721-2750, November.
    4. Ibsen, Kristoffer & Rosholm, Michael, 2024. "What Works? Interventions Aimed At Reducing Student Dropout in Higher Education," IZA Discussion Papers 16853, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Ogundari, Kolawole, 2021. "A systematic review of statistical methods for estimating an education production function," MPRA Paper 105283, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Gigante, Gimede & Manglaviti, Davide, 2022. "The ESG effect on the cost of debt financing: A sharp RD analysis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Remedial education; College enrollment; Drop-out and performance; Sharp regression discontinuity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

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