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Does Teacher Quality Affect Student Performance? Evidence from an Italian University

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  • Maria, De Paola

Abstract

In this paper we analyse whether the characteristics of university teaching staff matter with regards students’ performance and interest in the discipline. We use data on about one thousand students enrolled on the first level degree course in Business and Economics at a medium sized Italian University. Thanks to the random assignment of students to different teaching sections during their first year, we are able to analyze the effect that teachers with different characteristics, in terms of experience and research productivity, produce both on students’ performance, measured in terms of the grades obtained at subsequent exams and courses chosen. Our results suggest that teacher quality has statistically significant effects on students’ grades on subsequent courses. These effects are also robust after controlling for unobserved individual characteristics. On the other hand, we find less clear evidence when relating teacher quality to student involvement with a subject. It emerges that more experienced teachers have a negative impact on the probability of a student’s undertaking additional courses in a subject, while research productivity does not produce a statistically significant effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria, De Paola, 2008. "Does Teacher Quality Affect Student Performance? Evidence from an Italian University," MPRA Paper 8841, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:8841
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    Cited by:

    1. Brunello, Giorgio & De Paola, Maria, 2013. "The Costs of Early School Leaving in Europe," IZA Discussion Papers 7791, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Dahmani, Mounir & Ragni, Ludovic, 2008. "L'impact des technologies de l'information et de la communication sur les performances des étudiants [The impacts of Information and Communication Technologies on the students’ performance]," MPRA Paper 112238, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2009.
    3. Eline Sneyers & Kristof De Witte, 2017. "The interaction between dropout, graduation rates and quality ratings in universities," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 68(4), pages 416-430, April.
    4. Balcázar, Carlos Felipe & Nopo, Hugo R., 2014. "Broken Gears: The Value Added of Higher Education on Teachers' Academic Achievement," IZA Discussion Papers 8477, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Jaydeep Mukherjee, 2018. "Using New Case Studies for Evaluation of Marketing Student’s Academic Performance," Vision, , vol. 22(1), pages 61-67, March.
    6. Peter Madzík & Pavol Budaj & Dalibor Mikuláš & Dominik Zimon, 2019. "Application of the Kano Model for a Better Understanding of Customer Requirements in Higher Education—A Pilot Study," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-18, January.
    7. Mohan Zhang & Jing Tian & Hao Ni & Guangbao Fang, 2021. "Exploring Teacher Leadership and the Factors Contributing to It: An Empirical Study on Chinese Private Higher Education Institutions," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(1), pages 21582440211, March.
    8. Michela Ponzo & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2012. "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly: Teaching Evaluations, Beauty And Abilities," Working Papers 201204, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    9. Danilowicz-Gösele, Kamila, 2016. ""A" is the aim?," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 291, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    teaching quality; student performance;

    JEL classification:

    • A2 - General Economics and Teaching - - Economic Education and Teaching of Economics

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