IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iae/iaewps/wp2017n23.html

Students Are Almost as Effective as Professors in University Teaching

Author

Listed:
  • Jan Feld

    (School of Economics and Finance, Victoria University of Wellington; and IZA Institute of Labor Economics)

  • Nicolas Salamanca

    (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research and Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne; and IZA Institute of Labor Economics)

  • Ulf Zölitz§

    (Behavior and Inequality Research Institute (briq); IZA Institute of Labor Economics; and Department of Economics, Maastricht University)

Abstract

Many universities around the world rely on student instructors—current bachelor’s and master’s degree students—for tutorial teaching, yet we know nothing about their effectiveness. In a setting with random assignment of instructors to students, we show that student instructors are almost as effective as senior instructors at improving their students’ short- and longer-run academic achievement and labor market outcomes. We find little heterogeneity across different course types, student characteristics, or instructors’ personal academic quality. Our results suggest that the use of student instructors can serve as an effective tool for universities to reduce their costs with negligible negative effects on students.

Suggested Citation

  • Jan Feld & Nicolas Salamanca & Ulf Zölitz§, 2017. "Students Are Almost as Effective as Professors in University Teaching," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2017n23, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2017n23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/2488374/wp2017n23.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Griffith, Amanda L. & Main, Joyce B., 2021. "The role of the teaching assistant: Female role models in the classroom," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    2. Insler, Michael & McQuoid, Alexander F. & Rahman, Ahmed S. & Smith, Katherine, 2021. "Fear and Loathing in the Classroom: Why Does Teacher Quality Matter?," IZA Discussion Papers 14036, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Julius Koschnick, 2025. "Teacher-directed scientific change:The case of the English Scientific Revolution," Working Papers 0274, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    4. Zhu, Maria, 2021. "Limited contracts, limited quality? effects of adjunct instructors on student outcomes☆," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    5. Galkiewicz, Agata & Marcus, Jan & Siedler, Thomas, 2024. "E-Learning at Universities: Does Starting with Difficult Questions Affect Student Performance?," IZA Discussion Papers 17479, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Merkus, Erik & Schafmeister, Felix, 2021. "The role of in-person tutorials in higher education," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    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:iae:iaewps:wp2017n23. 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: Sheri Carnegie (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    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.