Informing Students about College: An Efficient Way to Decrease the Socio-Economic Gap in Enrollment: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment

Abstract

Although the proportion of students enrolled in college increased in the last decades, students from non-college family backgrounds remain underrepresented in higher education around the world. This study sheds light on whether the provision of information in a randomized controlled trial with more than 1,000 German high school students results in higher college enrollment rates. One year prior to high school graduation, we treated students in randomly selected schools by giving an in-class presentation on the benefits and costs of higher education as well as on possible funding options for college education. We collected data from students prior to the information intervention and followed them for four consecutive years. We find evidence that an information intervention increases students' application as well as their enrollment rates, in particular for students from non-college backgrounds with enrollment intentions prior to treatment. Moreover, treated students persist in college at a similar rate as students in the control group, i.e. they are not more likely to drop out of college. Our results indicate that a low-cost information intervention is an efficient tool to encourage students to translate their college intentions into actual enrollment.

Life expectancy and parental education

“…, they are more likely to attend an upper secondary school or to study (e.g. Peter et al, 2018), and they smoke less frequently (e.g. Huebener, 2018).…”

Does Ignorance of Economic Returns and Costs Explain the Educational Aspiration Gap? Representative Evidence from Adults and Adolescents

“…See Bettinger et al (2012), Hoxby and Turner (2013), Oreopoulos and Dunn (2013), Dinkelman and Martıńez (2014), Zafar (2015a), Hastings et al (2015), and Baker et al (2018). In the German context, Peter and Zambre (2017) and Peter et al (2018) show for a sample of students in 27 high-track schools in Berlin that information about labour market benefits and funding opportunities increases college intentions, applications and enrolment, with longer-run effects not differing by whether students' families have a university background. 10.…”

“…In the German context, Peter and Zambre (2017) and Peter et al . (2018) show for a sample of students in 27 high‐track schools in Berlin that information about labour market benefits and funding opportunities increases college intentions, applications and enrolment, with longer‐run effects not differing by whether students’ families have a university background.…”

Information Provision and Postgraduate Studies

“…The study population was recruited out of an existing experimental panel study that focused on the initial college-going decision of high school students of the 2014 graduation cohort in the Berlin area, Germany (Peter and Zambre, 2017;Peter et al, 2018). Our focus on the 446 students presumably enrolled in their final years of the undergraduate program in 2017 resulted in a number of benefits, including access to information on pre-baseline characteristics that were collected in the past.…”

“…This study is related to the large literature on the role of financial constraints or on the lack or effectiveness of information about actual costs and future monetary returns for the college enrollment decisions (see for example, Dynarski, 2002;Dynarski and Scott-Clayton, 2006;Bettinger et al, 2012;Oreopoulos and Dunn, 2013;Wales, 2013;Bettinger and Baker, 2014;Castleman et al, 2014;Kerr et al, 2015;Wiswall and Zafar, 2015;Castleman and Long, 2016;Oreopoulos and Ford, 2016;Carrell and Sacerdote, 2017;Dynarski et al, 2018). In the German context, Peter et al (2018) and Peter and Zambre (2017) study the effects of providing information about returns and financing possibilities for college education to high school students. One key finding is that students of nonacademic background, in particular those with intentions to enroll, are more likely to pursue college education if they have received information about its benefits.…”