Peer effects in college: how peers' performance can influence students' academic outcomes (original) (raw)
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Peer Effects in Higher Education
2003
In this chapter, we describe the potential significance of student peer effects for the economic structure of and behavior in higher education. Their existence would motivate much of the restricted supply, student queuing, and selectivity n and institutional competition via merit aid and honors colleges n that we see in American higher education; their (appropriate) non-linearity could justify the resulting stratification of higher education as an efficient way to produce human capital. In addition, we use data from the College and Beyond entering class of 1989, combined with phonebook data identifying roommates, to implement a quasi-experimental empirical strategy aimed at measuring peer effects in academic outcomes. In particular, we use data on individual students' grades, SAT scores, and the SAT scores of their roommates at three schools to estimate the effect of roommates' academic characteristics on an individual's grades. The results suggest that, for two of the three schools used, students in the middle of the SAT distribution do somewhat worse in terms of grades if they share a room with a student who is in the bottom 15 percent of the SAT distribution. Students in the top of the SAT distribution appear often not to be affected by the SAT scores of their roommates. These results are similar to those reported in earlier research using data from Williams (Zimmerman) and Dartmouth (Sacerdote).
Measuring Peer Effects in the Brazilian School System
2011
This paper investigates the existence and magnitude of peer e¤ects among pupils in Brazilian schools using a dataset on achievement of …fth-graders (around eleven years old) in Math, which is accompanied by detailed questionnaires completed by students, teachers and principals. We address the self-selection of group formation through a selection on observables hypothesis and use teacher's wage as a proxy for unobserved teacher's ability. A robustness check using as instrumental variable a question answered by the principal on how classrooms are formed at school was performed and similar results were found. Our results suggest that both contextual (exogenous) and endogenous peer e¤ects are important determinants of students' achievement in Brazil. Furthermore, by being able to separate out contextual e¤ects from endogenous peer e¤ects, we show that even though boys perform slightly better than girls in Math, children in classes with larger proportions of boys tend to have worse results in Math.
Peer Effects in Academic Outcomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
Review of Economics and Statistics, 2003
The author would like to thank Gordon Winston and Al Goethals for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper, as well as the Andrew Mellon Foundation for their financial support through the Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education.
It’s not what you know but who you know: Heterogeneous peer effects at a Colombian University
2018
This paper uses matched survey and administrative data on first-year Economics students who were studying at the Javeriana University in Bogotá, Colombia, in 2015 in order to estimate peer effects on student grades. We employ the strategy proposed by De Giorgi, Pellizzari & Redaelli (2010) to identify and estimate these peer effects. Our results show that peer effects are economically significant in their context, that they result from the sharing of specific rather than general skills among peers, and that they flow mainly from peers with whom students interact frequently and who are considered to be leaders.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
Social interactions with peers during learning have a significant impact on university students' academic achievement. As social ties are voluntary, an empirical estimation of peer effects is exposed to a potential endogeneity problem. To overcome this issue, we propose to define the peer group of an individual as their predicted friends. The specific features of the learning environment in higher education institutions may affect dimensions along which friendship ties form. To test the presence of peer effects in different educational and cultural contexts, we use data on students studying in two universities located in two different countries, Brazil and Russia. We assume that friendship is affected by homophily in student attributes, such as having the same region of origin, the same gender, and sharing the same study group. In both institutions, we find positive externalities from having high-ability peers. JEL Classification: I21; Z13.
Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2003
This paper develops a model in which colleges seek to maximize the quality of the educational experience provided to their students. We deduce predictions about the hierarchy of schools that emerges in equilibrium, the allocation of students by income and ability among schools, and about the pricing policies that schools adopt. The empirical findings of this paper suggest that there is a hierarchy of school qualities which is characterized by substantial stratification by income and ability. The evidence on pricing by ability is supportive of positive peer effects in educational achievement from high ability at the college level.
Peer group effects on the academic performance of Italian students
Applied Economics, 2010
We analyse peer effects among students of a middle-sized Italian public university. We explain students' average grade in exams passed during their Second Level Degree course on the basis of their pre-determined measures of abilities, personal characteristics and peer group abilities. Thanks to a rich administrative dataset, we are able to build a variety of definitions of peer groups, describing different kinds of students' interaction, based on classes attended together or exams taken in the same session. Self-selection problems are handled through Two-Stage Least Squares estimations using as an instrument, the exogenous assigning of students to different teaching classes in the compulsory courses attended during their First Level Degree course. We find statistically significant positive peer group effects, which are robust to the different definitions of peer group and to different measures of abilities. JEL Classification: I21; Z13; J24.
Peer Effects in Higher Education: Does the Field of Study Matter?
2009
Does the peer effect vary with the field of study? Using data from a middle-sized public university located in southern Italy and exploiting the random assignment of first-year students to college accommodation, we find that roommate peer effects for freshmen enrolled in the hard sciences are positive and significantly larger than for freshmen enrolled in the humanities and social sciences. We present a simple theoretical model which suggests that the uncovered differences between fields in the size of the peer effect could plausibly be generated by between-field variation in labor market returns, which affect optimal student effort. (JEL I21, Z13, J24)
2009
In this paper we investigate whether peers' behavior influences the choice of college major, thus contributing to the mismatch of skills in the labor market. Using a newly constructed dataset, we are able to identify the endogenous effect of peers on such decisions through a novel identification strategy that solves the common econometric problems of studies of social interactions. Results show that, indeed, one is more likely to choose a major when many of her peers make the same choice. We also provide evidence on skills mismatch in terms of entry wages and occupation. We find that peers can divert students from majors in which they have a relative ability advantage, with adverse consequences on academic performance, entry wages and job satisfaction.
Gender peer effects in university: Evidence from a randomized experiment
2014
Recent studies for primary and secondary education find positive effects of the share of girls in the classroom on achievement of boys and girls. This study examines whether these results can be extrapolated to post-secondary education. We conduct an experiment in which the shares of girls in workgroups for first year students in economics and business are manipulated and students are randomly assigned to these groups. Boys tend to postpone their dropout decision when surrounded by more girls, and there is also a modest reduction in early absenteeism. On the other hand, boys perform worse on courses with high math content when assigned to a group with many girls. Overall, however, we fail to find substantial gender peer effects on achievement. This in spite of the fact that students in groups with many girls help each other more often and study together more often.