Curbing Adult Student Attrition: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Raj Chande (), Michael Luca (), Michael Sanders (), Xian-Zhi Soon (), Oana Borcan (), Netta Barak-Corren (), Elizabeth Linos (), Elspeth Kirkman () and Sean Robinson ()
Additional contact information
Raj Chande: University of Bristol
Michael Luca: Harvard Business School, Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit
Michael Sanders: Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Xian-Zhi Soon: Behavioural Insights Team
Oana Borcan: University of Gothenburg
Netta Barak-Corren: Harvard Law School
Elizabeth Linos: Harvard Kennedy School of Government
Elspeth Kirkman: Behavioural Insights Team
Sean Robinson: Behavioural Insights Team

No 15-065, Harvard Business School Working Papers from Harvard Business School

Abstract: Roughly 20% of adults in the OECD lack basic numeracy and literacy skills. In the UK, many colleges offer fully government subsidized adult education programs to improve these skills. Constructing a unique dataset consisting of weekly attendance records for 1179 students, we find that approximately 25% of learners stop attending these programs in the first ten weeks and that average attendance rates deteriorate by 20% in that time. We implement a large?scale field experiment in which we send encouraging text messages to students. Our initial results show that these simple text messages reduce the proportion of students that stop attending by 36% and lead to a 7% increase in average attendance relative to the control group. The effects on attendance rates persist through the three weeks of available data following the initial intervention.

Keywords: Behavioral Economics; Field Experiment; Education; Adult Education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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