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

Emma Duchini

Economics of Education Review, 2017, vol. 60, issue C, 36-53

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.

Keywords: Remedial education; College enrollment; Drop-out and performance; Sharp regression discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:60:y:2017:i:c:p:36-53

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.06.004

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