Academic achievements: the effects of excess time to degree on GPA

Semester Course Load and Student Performance

“…The negatives of long time-to-degree are clear: earnings penalties for some (Witteveen and Attewell 2019 ), poorer overall performance, perhaps due to skill atrophy (Brugiavini et al 2020 ), cohort crowding (Kurlaender et at. 2014 ), and additional financial cost in terms of tuition outlays and delayed entry into the labor market.…”

“…The traditional set of education production inputs on the school side, which includes instructor and instruction quality as well as institutional capacity, has expanded to include student support and engagement-enhancement services, which are expected to improve student performance. Examples of student-engagement services can include first-year seminars (Culver and Bowman 2020 ), international exchange programs (Brugiavini et al ( 2020 ), and living-learning communities (Caviglia-Harris and Maier 2020 ). Traditional funding-based inputs are still expected to apply, and can contribute to institutional support for access to technology (Fairlie 2012 ).…”

“…More intense early enrollment is associated with improved degree completion at two- and four-year colleges, especially among minority students (Attewell, Heil, and Reisel, 2012 ; Attewell and Monaghan, 2016 ). These effects also apply to grades (Brugiavini et al 2020 ), and effects may be stronger if intensity is maintained (Belfield et al 2016 ). Volkwein and Lorang ( 1996 ), Knight ( 2004 ), Belfield et al ( 2016 ), and Venit ( 2017 ) all find direct or indirect evidence that increase course load reduces completion time, although Cornwell, Lee, and Mustard ( 2005 ) find only mixed evidence.…”

“…In addition, there may be as much as $12.5 billion in additional tuition outlay, given a the full-time average at public institutions of $9,970 (College Board 2018 ) These calculations do not include the expenditures made by the government on education. There can be additional labor market costs if long time to degree is perceived as a negative labor market signal (Witteveen and Attewell 2019 ; Brugiavini et al 2020 ).…”

Potential predictors of length of study for finance and accounting degrees: evidence from a public business school in Saudi Arabia

“…While several studies have been conducted to understand the determinants of timely graduation in the US ( Bound et al., 2012 ; Huntington-Klein and Gill, 2020 ; Kurlaender et al., 2014 ; Stohs and Schutte, 2019 ; Witteveen and Attewell, 2021 ; Yue and Fu, 2017 ; Zhu, 2004 ), fewer studies have been carried out in developed countries in Europe and the rest of the world, including Lassibille and Navarro Gómez (2011) in Spain and Aina et al. (2011) and Brugiavini et al. (2020) in Italy.…”