The Salience of Remote Friendship: Quasi-experimental Evidence When Instruction Goes Virtual

Arnab Basu, Nancy Chau and Yudi Wang

No 2568, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin)

Abstract: What are remote friends for? Unanticipated campus closures during COVID19 created uneven student-level exposures to virtual learning challenges, and physically separated campus friends. Using university administrative data, and exogenous class-level differences in pre-pandemic on-campus housing assignments for parallel trend validation, this paper unpacks student-by-course variations in grade expectations using within-semester switches in grade option choice as cues. We find causal evidence that pandemic learning challenges encouraged Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory grade-option uptake among freshmen, but having at least one (remote) friend in class nullified the effect. We explore evidence consistent with performance-improving mutual support despite physical distance between friends as underlying mechanism.

Keywords: Remote Friendship; Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory Grade Option; COVID19; Distance Education; Learning Outcomes. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-09
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crm:wpaper:2568

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