Precollege Ability Research Articles

Study-group diversity and early college academic outcomes: Experimental evidence from a higher education inclusion program in Peru

Beca18 is a Peruvian social inclusion program for higher education. It provides full scholarships to economically disadvantaged public high school graduates who have been admitted to eligible universities. We exploit the random assignment of first-year students to small study groups at an elite university in Peru to evaluate how the interactions between relatively wealthy non-Beca18 students, who predominate at this institution, and Beca18 fellows affect early academic outcomes. We find that assignment to mixed study groups, composed of Beca18 and non-Beca18 students, on average improves performance on individual weekly/biweekly quizzes. In the case of Beca18 fellows, the positive effect of mixed-study environments is greater among fellows that possess relatively high academic ability as incoming students (that is, among those with higher pre-college academic ability). Interestingly, the opposite holds for non-Beca18 students. We identify two potential underlying mechanisms behind these results: (i) peers’ incoming (pre-college) academic ability and (ii) peer's attitudes towards effort and cooperation. Beca18 students in mixed study groups seem to benefit more from the relatively higher academic ability their non-Beca18 peers possess upon entrance. Non-Beca18 students appear to benefit from experiencing the higher effort and cooperation levels displayed by Beca18 fellows. Our evidence also suggests that some individuals may be adversely affected. These include Beca18 students who are toward the bottom of their socioeconomic group and non-Beca18 students who are at the top of their socioeconomic group in terms of pre-college ability distribution.

Does Work Inhibit Cognitive Development During College?

This longitudinal investigation of 23 colleges and universities sought to estimate the impacts of on- and off-campus work on standardized measures of student cognitive development across three years of college. With controls made for student background characteristics and other experiences of college, there was little evidence to suggest that either form of work inhibited cognitive development in the first year of college. In the second year of college, on-campus work had small negative total and direct influences on science reasoning, but neither form of work inhibited students’ writing skills. Both forms of work had a significant curvilinear relationship with a composite measure of end-of-third-year cognitive development consisting of reading comprehension and critical thinking. Part-time on- or off-campus work had a positive influence, but on-campus work in excess of 15 hours per week or off-campus work in excess of 20 hours per week had a negative impact. Finally, across all years of the study, the cognitive impacts of work appear to be essentially the same, irrespective of student characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, gender, age, precollege ability, full-or part-time enrollment) and whether or not the student attended a two-year or a four-year college.

Increasing minority students' success in calculus

AbstractThe Academic Excellence Workship demonstrates that achievement of underrepresented minority students in mathematics and subsequent persistence in SME majors may be associated less with precollege ability than with in‐college academic experiences and expectations.

Cognitive Effects of 2-Year and 4-Year Colleges: New Evidence

This study investigated the freshman-year cognitive impacts of five 2-year and six 4-year colleges drawn from all sections of the United States. Controlling for individual precollege ability, there was a general parity between 2-year and 4-year college students on end-of-freshman year reading comprehension, mathematics, critical thinking, and composite achievement. This general parity, however, masked conditional effects based on gender and ethnicity. Men benefited cognitively more from 2-year colleges, whereas women realized greater cognitive returns from 4-year colleges. Non-White students benefited more from a 2-year college, whereas the reverse was true for their White counterparts.