Female Faculty Role Models and Student Outcomes: A Caveat about Aggregation

Abstract

The idea that female faculty might serve as role models for female students has led to studies of the effect of female faculty on female student performance. Due to varying levels of aggregation of the measure of student exposure to female faculty—percentage of female faculty at an institution or department, percentage of classes taught by females, or the effect of female instructors on female students in a class—existing research provides mixed and incompatible results. By applying both non-aggregated and aggregated measures of exposure to female role models to the same data, this analysis demonstrates how aggregation affects the association between exposure to female role models and student achievement. This study shows that female instructors have a significant positive effect on female student grade performance and do not have a statistically significant effect on male student performance.