ERIC Number: EJ1259731
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 30
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1557-3060
EISSN: N/A
The Effects of Demographic Mismatch in an Elite Professional School Setting
Birdsall, Chris; Gershenson, Seth; Zuniga, Raymond
Education Finance and Policy, v15 n3 p457-486 Sum 2020
Ten years of administrative data from a diverse, private, top-100 law school are used to examine the ways in which female and nonwhite students benefit from exposure to demographically similar faculty in first-year, required law courses. Arguably, causal impacts of exposure to same-sex and same-race instructors on course-specific outcomes such as course grades are identified by leveraging quasi-random classroom assignments and a two-way (student and classroom) fixed effects strategy. Having an other-sex instructor reduces the likelihood of receiving a good grade (A or A-) by 1 percentage point (3 percent) and having an other-race instructor reduces the likelihood of receiving a good grade by 3 percentage points (10 percent). The effects of student--instructor demographic mismatch are particularly salient for nonwhite and female students. These results provide novel evidence of the pervasiveness of demographic-match effects and of the graduate school education production function.
Descriptors: Private Colleges, Law Schools, Gender Differences, Females, Racial Differences, Ethnicity, Minority Group Students, Student Diversity, Diversity (Faculty), Teacher Characteristics, Student Characteristics, Grades (Scholastic), Demography, At Risk Students, Minority Group Teachers, Whites
MIT Press. 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. Tel: 617-253-2889; Fax: 617-253-1709; e-mail: journals-rights@mit.edu; Web site: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/edfp
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A