Semester Course Load and Student Performance
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Semester Course Load and Student Performance Nick Huntington‑Klein1 · Andrew Gill1 Received: 28 September 2019 / Accepted: 6 October 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Many college students in the United States take longer than four years to complete their bachelor’s degrees. Long time-to-degree can increase higher education costs by billions. Time-to-degree can be reduced if students take more credits each term. While academic momentum theory suggests that additional credits may also improve student performance, and there is a strong positive correlation between course load and student performance, high course load may reduce time investment in each course, giving high course load a negative causal effect on performance. Concern about the negative impact of course load on performance, especially for struggling students, may lead to pushback against policies to reduce time-to-degree by increasing course load. Using longitudinal data from a regional four-year university with a high average time-to-degree, we find no evidence that high course loads have a negative impact on student grades, even for students at the low end of the performance distribution. This result is consistent with a model where students substitute time away from non-education activities when their course loads increase. Keywords Course load · Time-to-degree · Student performance · Grades
Introduction Increased time-to-degree from post-secondary institutions in the United States has taken a prominent position along with low completion rates, access, affordability, and mounting student debt as a major public-policy concern in higher education. Among first-time full-time students seeking a bachelor’s degree and commencing their studies in 2009, only 39.8% graduated from their first institution attended within 4 years (U.S. Department of Education 2017). The problem is especially severe at public institutions, where the same figure is 34.8% (58.6% at 6 years). The rate at private not-for-profit private institutions is 53.0% (65.6% at six years).
* Andrew Gill [email protected] Nick Huntington‑Klein nhuntington‑[email protected] 1
Department of Economics, California State University Fullerton CSU Fullerton, 800 N State College Blvd, Fullerton, CA 92831, USA
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Research in Higher Education
These low four and six-year graduation rates are, in part, a reflection of long time-todegree for successful graduates. The average time enrolled for bachelor’s degree completion between July 2014 and June 2015 was 5.2 years in public institutions and 4.8 years in private not-for-profit institutions (Shapiro et al. 2016, Appendix C: Data Tables). Among those receiving bachelor’s degrees in public institutions, 29.9% were enrolled for 6 years and 18.2% were enrolled for 7 to 8 years. Of all graduates, approximately 306,000 bachelor’s degree recipients were enrolled for 6 years and 186,000 were enrolled for roughly 7.5 years. The extra time to complete a bachelor’s degree can be costly. Comparing the wages of current col
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