Access to Technology and the Transfer Function of Community Colleges: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Robert Fairlie and Samantha H. Grunberg ()
Additional contact information
Samantha H. Grunberg: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

No 7764, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Access to information may represent an important barrier to learning about and ultimately transferring to 4-year colleges for low-income community college students. This paper explores the role that access to information technology, in particular, plays in enhancing, or possibly detracting from, the transfer function of the community college. Using data from the first-ever field experiment randomly providing free computers to students, we examine the relationships between access to home computers and enrollment in transferable courses and actual transfers to 4-year colleges. The results from the field experiment indicate that the treatment group of students receiving free computers has a 4.5 percentage point higher probability of taking transferable courses than the control group of students not receiving free computers. The evidence is less clear for the effects on actual transfers to 4-year colleges and the probability of using a computer to search for college information (which possibly represents one of the mechanisms for positive effects). In both cases, point estimates are positive, but the confidence intervals are wide. Finally, power calculations indicate that sample sizes would have to be considerably larger to find statistically significant treatment effects and reasonably precise confidence intervals given the actual transfer rate point estimates.

Keywords: transfers; community college; ICT; experiment; computer; technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2013-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-ict and nep-nps
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: Economic Inquiry, 2014, 52 (3), 1040 - 1059

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7764.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: ACCESS TO TECHNOLOGY AND THE TRANSFER FUNCTION OF COMMUNITY COLLEGES: EVIDENCE FROM A FIELD EXPERIMENT (2014)
Working Paper: Access to Technology and the Transfer Function of Community Colleges: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2014)
Working Paper: Access to Techonology and the Transfer Function of Community Colleges: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2013)
Working Paper: Access to Technology and the Transfer Function of Community Colleges: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2012)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7764

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().