IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v241y2026ics0167268125005001.html

No student left behind? Relative feedback and university completion

Author

Listed:
  • Brade, Raphael
  • Himmler, Oliver
  • Jäckle, Robert

Abstract

We present first evidence that relative feedback can improve both the speed and quality of university graduation. Providing students with ongoing relative feedback on accumulated course credits – a measure of progress toward degree completion – increases the likelihood of graduating within one year of the officially scheduled study duration by 3.7 percentage points (an 8 % increase), thus accelerating graduation by 0.15 semesters (0.12 SD). Importantly, this does not lead to a decline in performance: grades improve by 0.063 SD. There are, however, distributional implications that policymakers need to consider: outcomes of students with medium pre-treatment graduation probabilities improve when the feedback informs them of an above-average performance – otherwise, their outcomes deteriorate. Combined with survey evidence, the pattern of results suggests that learning about own ability is a plausible mechanism.

Suggested Citation

  • Brade, Raphael & Himmler, Oliver & Jäckle, Robert, 2026. "No student left behind? Relative feedback and university completion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 241(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:241:y:2026:i:c:s0167268125005001
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107383
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268125005001
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107383?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Goller & Enzo Brox & Stefan C. Wolter, 2026. "Imperfect Self-knowledge about Skills and Skill Mismatch," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0253, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:241:y:2026:i:c:s0167268125005001. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.