Minding the Gap: Academic Outcomes from Pre-college Programs

Phoebe Kotlikoff, Ahmed Rahman and Katherine Smith ()
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Phoebe Kotlikoff: United States Navy
Katherine Smith: U.S. Naval Academy

No 14075, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effects of assignment to a one-year college preparatory program on academic performance in college. To measure the value added from pre-college programs, we use a large dataset of United States Naval Academy students from the 1988 to 2018 graduating classes, of which a little over 22% received post-high school remediation. Given the Academy's unique admissions criteria that members of each incoming class originate from an even distribution of congressional districts, we instrument for pre-college treatment using the number and quality of other applicants originating from the same district. After incorporating these instruments as well as a wide range of outcome measures and background characteristics, we find that preparatory programs have positive but limited effects for human capital development for undergraduate students. Specifically, these pre-college programs promote significant but short-lived improvements in academic grades. They also can encourage students to choose STEM-oriented majors, and promote retention by lowering voluntary exits.

Keywords: liberal arts college; higher education; remedial education; human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ore
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Published - published in: Education Economics 2022, 30 (19), 3-24

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Journal Article: Minding the gap: academic outcomes from pre-college programs (2022)
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