Peer Effects in Higher Education (original) (raw)
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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.
Residential peer effects in higher education: does the field of study matter?
2008
Residential Peer Effects in Higher Education: Does the Field of Study Matter? * Economists have a poor understanding of the mechanisms underlying reduced-form college peer effects. In this paper we explore a candidate mechanism, the provision of school effort. We show that, when earnings reflect individual educational performance as well as the field of study selected at college, and individual effort is a function of expected earnings, the size of the peer effect varies by field. 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 evidence that peer effects are positive and statistically significant for students enrolled in the fields of Engineering, Maths and Natural Sciences-which are expected to generate higher earnings after college-and not different from zero for students enrolled in the Humanities, Social and Life Sciences, which give access to lower payoffs. An implication of our model is that shocks affecting college wage premia may alter the size of peer effects.
Peer effects in college: how peers' performance can influence students' academic outcomes
2021
This paper investigates the existence of peer effects in academic outcomes by exploring specificities in the student's admission process of a Brazilian federal university, which works as a natural experiment. Individuals who are comparable in terms of previous academic achievement end up having classmates with better or worse performance in college because of the assignment rule of students to classrooms. Thus, our identification strategy for estimating peer effects on academic outcomes eliminates the endogenous selfselection into groups that would otherwise undermine the causal inference of peer effects. Overall, our findings showed that joining a class with high-ability students damages academic achievements of the lowestability students at UFMG. Although male and female students are both negatively affected by being in the first (better) class, we found gender differences. Specifically, being at the bottom of the better class make females take less radical decisions compared to male students in the sense that female students continue to study even though with lower performance (reduced GPA and credits earned) while male students seem to be more prone towards dropping out (increased number of subjects-or even University registration-cancelled and reduced attendance in classroom). We have also found other heterogeneities in peer effects in college in terms of class shift, period of admission, area of study and parents' education. This study is a necessary step before investigating the impact of peer quality on after-graduating decisions using the same natural experiment. This will allow us to deepen our understanding of how peer effects can also have long-lasting impacts.
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)
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.
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.
Peer Effects on Undergraduate Business Student Performance
2012
We evaluate the endogenous peer influence of students in one U.S. public University College of Business. In particular, we measure the peer effect on student grades. This study utilises an exclusion restriction approach similar to De to estimate the endogenous peer effect. Our results support the finding that a student's classroom performance has a significant effect on their peers. Overall, our results suggest a negative peer effect. However, we find that the direction and magnitude of the peer effect is sensitive to the student's own average ability and that of their peers.
2015
Students starting at a two-year college are much less likely to graduate than similar students who start at a four-year college, but the sources of this attainment gap are largely unexplained. This paper investigates the attainment consequences of sector choice and peer quality among recent high school graduates. Using data on all Preliminary SAT (PSAT) test-takers between 2004 and 2006, we develop a novel measure of peer ability for most two-year and four-year colleges in the United States-the average PSAT of enrolled students. We document substantial variation in this measure of peer quality across two-year colleges and nontrivial overlap between the two-year and four-year sectors. We find that half the gap in bachelor's degree attainment rates across sectors is explained by differences in peers, leaving room for structural barriers to transferring between institutions to also play an important role.