IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp11232.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Effects of Academic Probation on College Success: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Four Texas Universities

Author

Listed:
  • Fletcher, Jason M.

    (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

  • Tokmouline, Mansur

    (Yale College)

Abstract

While nearly all colleges and universities in the United States use academic probation as a means to signal to students a need to improve performance, very little is known about the use of this designation and the programs that accompany it on college success. This paper uses a regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effects of these programs at four universities of varying selectivity in Texas. Results suggest that academic probation status following the first semester of college may serve as a short term "wake up call" to some students, in that second semester performance is improved. However, our findings also suggest that this short term boost in performance fades out over time and students who are on academic probation following their first semesters of college do not have higher rates of persistence or graduation. We also find important differential responses to academic probation based on pre-determined student characteristics as well as high school of origin. However none of the heterogeneous effects are consistent across universities, limiting the application of simple models of education standards.

Suggested Citation

  • Fletcher, Jason M. & Tokmouline, Mansur, 2017. "The Effects of Academic Probation on College Success: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Four Texas Universities," IZA Discussion Papers 11232, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11232
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp11232.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric P. Bettinger & Bridget Terry Long, 2009. "Addressing the Needs of Underprepared Students in Higher Education: Does College Remediation Work?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 44(3).
    2. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2009. "Regression Discontinuity Designs In Economics," Working Papers 1118, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    3. David S. Lee & Thomas Lemieux, 2010. "Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(2), pages 281-355, June.
    4. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren, 2004. "Remedial Education and Student Achievement: A Regression-Discontinuity Analysis," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 226-244, February.
    5. Jason M. Lindo & Nicholas J. Sanders & Philip Oreopoulos, 2010. "Ability, Gender, and Performance Standards: Evidence from Academic Probation," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 95-117, April.
    6. Susan Dynarski, 2008. "Building the Stock of College-Educated Labor," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(3), pages 576-610.
    7. Imbens, Guido W. & Lemieux, Thomas, 2008. "Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 615-635, February.
    8. Joshua D. Angrist & Victor Lavy, 2002. "The Effect of High School Matriculation Awards: Evidence from Randomized Trials," NBER Working Papers 9389, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. McCrary, Justin, 2008. "Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 698-714, February.
    10. Juan Carlos Calcagno & Bridget Terry Long, 2008. "The Impact of Postsecondary Remediation Using a Regression Discontinuity Approach: Addressing Endogenous Sorting and Noncompliance," NBER Working Papers 14194, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Lee, David S. & Card, David, 2008. "Regression discontinuity inference with specification error," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(2), pages 655-674, February.
    12. Alan Barreca & Melanie Guldi & Jason M. Lindo & Glen R. Waddell, 2010. "Running and Jumping Variables in RD Designs," Working Papers 1001, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Aaron Albert & Nathan Wozny, 2022. "The Impact of Academic Probation: Do Intensive Interventions Help?," Working Papers 2022-02, Department of Economics and Geosciences, US Air Force Academy.
    2. Wright, Nicholas A., 2020. "Perform better, or else: Academic probation, public praise, and students decision-making," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    3. Nicholas A. Bowman & Nayoung Jang & D. Martin Kivlighan & Nancy Schneider & Xiaomeng Ye, 2020. "The Impact of a Goal-Setting Intervention for Engineering Students on Academic Probation," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 61(1), pages 142-166, February.
    4. Nicholas A. Bowman & Nayoung Jang, 2022. "What is the Purpose of Academic Probation? Its Substantial Negative Effects on Four-Year Graduation," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 63(8), pages 1285-1311, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jason M. Lindo & Nicholas J. Sanders & Philip Oreopoulos, 2010. "Ability, Gender, and Performance Standards: Evidence from Academic Probation," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 95-117, April.
    2. Duchini, Emma, 2017. "Is college remedial education a worthy investment? New evidence from a sharp regression discontinuity design," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 36-53.
    3. Kalena E. Cortes & Joshua S. Goodman & Takako Nomi, 2015. "Intensive Math Instruction and Educational Attainment: Long-Run Impacts of Double-Dose Algebra," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(1), pages 108-158.
    4. Maria Paola & Vincenzo Scoppa, 2014. "The effectiveness of remedial courses in Italy: a fuzzy regression discontinuity design," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 365-386, April.
    5. Paco Martorell & Isaac McFarlin, Jr. & Yu Xue, 2014. "Does Failing a Placement Exam Discourage Underprepared Students from Going to College?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 10(1), pages 46-80, November.
    6. Cortes, Kalena E. & Goodman, Joshua Samuel & Nomi, Takako, 2015. "Intensive Math Instruction and Educational Attainment," Scholarly Articles 34298862, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    7. Mazzutti, Caio Cícero Toledo Piza da Costa, 2016. "Three essays on the causal impacts of child labour laws in Brazil," Economics PhD Theses 0616, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    8. Mauricio Villamizar‐Villegas & Freddy A. Pinzon‐Puerto & Maria Alejandra Ruiz‐Sanchez, 2022. "A comprehensive history of regression discontinuity designs: An empirical survey of the last 60 years," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1130-1178, September.
    9. Jin-young Choi & Myoung-jae Lee, 2017. "Regression discontinuity: review with extensions," Statistical Papers, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 1217-1246, December.
    10. Otávio Bartalotti, 2013. "Theory and Practice of Inference in Regression Discontinuity: A Fixed-Bandwidth Asymptotics Approach," Working Papers 1302, Tulane University, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2013.
    11. Cecilia Speroni, "undated". "High School Dual Enrollment Programs: Are We Fast-Tracking Students Too Fast?," Mathematica Policy Research Reports ae47a4f61e47474d97003704c, Mathematica Policy Research.
    12. Bartalotti Otávio, 2019. "Regression Discontinuity and Heteroskedasticity Robust Standard Errors: Evidence from a Fixed-Bandwidth Approximation," Journal of Econometric Methods, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-26, January.
    13. Carlos Ospino, 2018. "The Effects of Being Subject to the Colombian Apprenticeship Contract on Manufacturing Firm Performance," CEDLAS, Working Papers 0230, CEDLAS, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.
    14. Tafreschi, Darjusch & Thiemann, Petra, 2016. "Doing it twice, getting it right? The effects of grade retention and course repetition in higher education," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 198-219.
    15. Guido Imbens & Stefan Wager, 2019. "Optimized Regression Discontinuity Designs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 264-278, May.
    16. repec:mpr:mprres:7288 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Blaise Melly & Rafael Lalive, 2020. "Estimation, Inference, and Interpretation in the Regression Discontinuity Design," Diskussionsschriften dp2016, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    18. Butcher, Kristin F. & McEwan, Patrick J. & Taylor, Corrine H., 2010. "The effects of quantitative skills training on college outcomes and peers," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 187-199, April.
    19. Onda, Masayuki & Seyler, Edward, 2020. "English learners reclassification and academic achievement: Evidence from Minnesota," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    20. Xu, Ke-Li, 2017. "Regression discontinuity with categorical outcomes," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 201(1), pages 1-18.
    21. Georgiou, Georgios, 2014. "Does increased post-release supervision of criminal offenders reduce recidivism? Evidence from a statewide quasi-experiment," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 221-243.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    academic probation; regression discontinuity; higher education;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:iza:izadps:dp11232. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.