Huntington-Klein Nick, Gill Andrew
Department of Economics, California State University Fullerton CSU Fullerton, 800 N State College Blvd, Fullerton, CA 92831 USA.
Res High Educ. 2021;62(5):623-650. doi: 10.1007/s11162-020-09614-8. Epub 2020 Oct 18.
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.
美国许多大学生完成学士学位所需的时间超过四年。攻读学位时间过长会使高等教育成本增加数十亿美元。如果学生每学期修读更多学分，攻读学位的时间可以缩短。虽然学术动力理论表明额外的学分也可能提高学生成绩，并且课程负担与学生成绩之间存在很强的正相关，但高课程负担可能会减少在每门课程上投入的时间，从而对成绩产生负面因果影响。对课程负担对成绩的负面影响的担忧，尤其是对学习困难的学生来说，可能会导致抵制通过增加课程负担来缩短攻读学位时间的政策。利用一所平均攻读学位时间较长的地区性四年制大学的纵向数据，我们发现没有证据表明高课程负担会对学生成绩产生负面影响，即使对于成绩分布低端的学生也是如此。这一结果与一个模型一致，即当学生的课程负担增加时，他们会从非教育活动中抽出时间。
