Information Framing and Student Decisions: Evidence from an Opportunity Cost Intervention

Opportunity costs are central to economic decision-making but often neglected. In a pre-registered experiment with 2,222 German university freshmen, one treatment provides salary information; another additionally frames it as the opportunity cost of delayed graduation. Only the opportunity cost framing causes students to update salary expectations. We find no effect on academic progress but a 2.8 percentage points increase in first-semester dropout (p=0.080), concentrated among high-dropout-probability students (5.9 pp, p=0.025). For these marginal students, dropping out instead of progressing faster is the actionable margin. By semester three, dropout rates converge, suggesting acceleration of eventual exits rather than additional dropouts.