Gender, Peer Advising, and College Success
Publication Date
1-1-2016
Grant Type
Early Career Research Award
Description
Postsecondary education is critical to labor market success and upward socioeconomic mobility. It is troubling, then, that male, low income, and racial minority students attend and complete college at disproportionately low rates. Conditional on matriculating, these students frequently encounter struggles during their first year of college and are disproportionately less likely to complete college, yet little is known about the efficacy of interventions that might improve their postsecondary outcomes. The proposed project will investigate the potential for one low cost, scalable intervention to improve postsecondary student outcomes, particularly those of male, minority, and low income students: a voluntary peer advising program. I will exploit exogenous variation in advisor-student assignments to identify causal estimates of (i) the impact of being assigned a same-sex advisor on participation in the peer advising program and (ii) the impact of participation in the peer advising program on postsecondary outcomes such as retention, GPA, and graduation.
Grant Product
LATE for the meeting: Gender, peer advising, and college success
Upjohn Institute Working Paper No. 16-262, 2016
Ellis, Jimmy R. and Seth Gershenson. 2016. LATE for the Meeting: Gender, Peer Advising, and College Success. IZA Discussion Paper No. 9956.