The Disparate Impacts of Acade mic Probation
Abstract:
Academic probation is a po licy affecting 10 to 20 percent of all first-year U.S. college students. Th is paper provides evidence on the role of academic probation in widening so cioeconomic gaps in educational attainment. Our setting is a large public u niversity in California\, where first-year students are placed on academic probation if their GPA falls below a 2.0. Using a regression discontinuity design\, we find that being marginally placed on academic probation has no significant impact on first-year GPA\, but does significantly increase low- income students’ first year dropout rate. Low-income students are also 22.8 percentage points less likely to graduate within 6 years. High-income stud ents are largely unaffected by academic probation placement. We next examin e whether an alternative academic probation policy can limit these negative effects. Later cohorts at this university are placed on academic probation and required to participate in a success program if their GPA is below a 2 .0. We find that both low- and high-income students do not experience a det erioration in their first-year dropout or graduation rates\, and significan tly improve their GPA as a result of this alternative policy. Our findings highlight that while universal academic probation widens socioeconomic gaps in degree completion\, combining probation with academic supports can coun teract these effects.
Organized by: Sam Norris
LOCATION:IONA 533 GEO:49.260872;-123.113952 URL;VALUE=URI:https://economics.ubc.ca/events/event/serena-canaan-sfu-labou r-public-seminar/ END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0800 DTSTART:20251102T090000 TZNAME:PST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR