Working Paper: NBER ID: w19031
Authors: Scott E. Carrell; Bruce Sacerdote
Abstract: We present evidence from a recent field experiment in college coaching/ mentoring. We find surprisingly large impacts on college attendance and persistence. We test several theories as to why a short lived intervention has large impacts on lifetime human capital investments. We do not find evidence that the treatment effect derives from simple behavioral mistakes or a lack of easily obtained information. Instead our mentoring program substitutes for the potentially expensive and often missing ingredient of skilled parental or teacher time and encouragement. Our positive effects are concentrated among students who do not rely on parental or teacher support for college applications and who are less extraverted. Our treatments that provide financial incentives or information alone do not appear to be effective. For women, assignment to our mentoring treatment yields a 15 percentage point increase in the college going rate while treatment on the treated estimates are 30 percentage points (against a control complier mean rate of 43 percent). We find much smaller treatment effects for men and the difference in treatment effects across genders is partially explained by the differential in self-reported labor market opportunities.
Keywords: college attendance; college persistence; mentoring; field experiment; human capital
JEL Codes: I2
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| mentoring treatment (C92) | college-going rate (I23) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | college-going rate (treatment-on-the-treated) (I23) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | college-going rate for women (I23) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | college-going rate for students without parental or teacher support (I21) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | college-going rate for less extraverted students (D29) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | college-going rate for men (I23) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | college-going behavior (I23) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | application completion (Y20) |
| low self-esteem (I32) | effectiveness of mentoring treatment (C92) |
| fear of rejection (D91) | application completion (Y20) |
| mentoring treatment (C92) | students who are forgetful or disorganized (Y40) |
| parental and teacher support (I24) | college application process (I23) |