LATE for the Meeting: Gender, Peer Advising, and College Success

Jimmy R. Ellis () and Seth Gershenson
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Jimmy R. Ellis: American University

No 9956, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Many male and first-generation college goers struggle in their first year of postsecondary education. Mentoring programs have been touted as a potential solution to help such students acclimate to college life, yet causal evidence on the impact of such programs, and the factors that influence participation in them, is scant. This study leverages a natural experiment in which peer advisors (PA) were quasi-randomly assigned to first-year university students to show that: (i) male students were significantly more likely to voluntarily meet their assigned PA when the PA was also male and (ii) these compliers were significantly more likely to persist into the second year of postsecondary schooling. We find no effect of being assigned to a same-sex PA on female students' use of the PA program, nor do we find any evidence that the PA program affected subsequent academic performance (GPAs).

Keywords: retention; gender gap; mentoring; peer advising; higher education; demographic mismatch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2016-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published as 'Gender, peer advising, and college success' in: Labour Economics, 2020, 62, 101775

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Working Paper: LATE for the meeting: Gender, peer advising, and college success (2016)
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