Scaling up and Crowding out: How German Adult Education Centers Adapted Course Offers to Refugee Integration

Abstract

Language skills are central to refugee integration and the availability of language courses could thus be a limiting factor. We explore how the most important provider of language courses in Germany, adult education centers (VHS), adapted their course supply to the refugee wave of 2015/2016. Our results highlight two channels through which the local environment can affect opportunities for participation in adult learning: First, exploiting the quasi-random allocation of refugees to counties, we causally estimate by how much VHS scaled up their German language course (DAF) supply as a reaction. Moreover, we show that DAF courses were created almost exclusively at the cost of other courses, that is, by crowding out. Second, we uncover heterogeneities in scaling success. VHS with more prior DAF course experience and larger VHS adapted better, which shows the relevance of initial conditions in course offers.

Language and culture learning needs of adult refugees

“…Refugees vary culturally, linguistically, and ethnically from most U.S. populations (Chao, 2020), and they differ among themselves in terms of their English proficiency. Thus, fostering effective integration is a critical effort for both the refugees and the host communities (Thomsen & Weilage, 2021). While refugees navigate through the diverse cultural frames of references, dramatic changes in living conditions, and language, they interact with the members of the host communities in various realms of life such as education, social, and economic domains, which creates a mutual adaptation process.…”