As you may have read on this blog, the economist Roland Fryer has done quite a bit of research on bribing kids — i.e., offering financial rewards for good grades. A new working paper from Josh Angrist, Philip Oreopoulos and Tyler Williams examines the effect of financial rewards on performance among an older cohort: college students. First- and second-year college students in Canada were offered cash rewards for grades above 70 and were also contacted by upperclassmen advisers “trained to provide advice about study strategies, time management, and university?bureaucracy.” The authors found that “[t]he intervention increased the number of courses graded above 70 and points earned above 70 for second-year students, but there was no significant effect on overall GPA. Results are somewhat stronger for a subsample that correctly described the program rules.” Their findings are consistent with previous research indicating that the incentives are less successful for older children. [%comments]
More Evidence That Paying for Grades Isn’t Easy
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Wouldn that be related to the fact that older kids, specially college students, are supposed to be on a creative environment.
College is full of creative tasks, and thus giving incentives to get good grades might focus the students on the money rather on the imagination needed to solve the task at hand, thus utterly failing.
Elementary school and such, needs little imagination or actual brain work, to get good grades you just need to do mechanichal works that work well with motivations such as economic ones.
Incentives break down if there is no guaranteed outcome. I think there is a misconception that people can just go out and get good grades. If someone lacks natural talent…and in this case it is the sort of book smart talent that translates into consistent good grades, no incentive will matter because the payout is far from guaranteed.
If you were to offer me $100 to get an A, but if I know that if I spend hours and hours staring at a textbook I’ll still only have a 20% chance of getting an A the expected payout is only $20 and with cognitive biases factored in it might as well be $0. School performance is not something a child necessarily has all the tools to succeed in. Offering someone an intensive to do something that they literally have no ability to do will probably only result in depression or other negative outcomes. These systems need to go after things that the child does have in their power to affect, such as attendance, book reading, participation, etc.
My daughter had a lower grade point at university, but it’s not because she didn’t work as hard or because she is less intelligent. She took one of the most difficult and demanding degrees out there.
During her time at university, she had many friends who had been awarded contingent scholarships (ie they would lose them if their grades dropped.) These students invariably shied away from taking anything difficult and filled their schedules with “basket weaving” classes.
This is the perverse effect of this financial incentive. Even if GPAs did appear better on paper, the quality of education received was definitely worse. It rewards students for taking watered-down degrees.
If there was no improvement in overall GPA, it would seem that these students, in order to obtain the reward, worked harder in the particular class…and let another one slide. It’s almost as if a student can (or will) only do so much. He can do enough for an A in 4 classes and an F in the fifth…or he can perhaps make a B in three class and C’s in the others.
I know in my first term in college, I took a full load. I made A’s in all courses but one: English–in which I made an F (thank you, Professor Leochler–the teacher who took me from F to A!). From that point on, I avoided full loads. I just didn’t have the time, energy, firepower, intelligence, or commitment–something!–to make A’s in all courses.
Maybe the key is to make students EARN the right to take a full load. That is, ONLY those who excel in three classes can take four; etc.
@off-topic taxation and school funding thread
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-infante/failing-public-school-education-reform_b_803368.html
Zip code predicts success. It has much less to do with the schools in that zip code than with the parents there. Unfortunately, holding parents accountable for their poor parenting, often stemming from an unfortunate socioeconomic status, isn’t tenable politically or ethically. It is still correct.
On topic,
Paying students who are already well-educated enough to be in college doesn’t work, and that shouldn’t be surprising. Setting the bar as low as 70 isn’t going to improve average GPA. Many programs won’t accept grades below C for people to graduate with a particular major.
Only students who would be getting terrible grades are going to change their behavior at all for this program, and if they were getting bad grades at the college level before, why would they aim much higher than what the administration deems laudable – 70 in everything.
Reading some of the comments, one might conclude that all students have the same talent and only teachers, parents and hard work account for the difference in grades.
It is at least worth considering that some students are more talented than others and that any incentive program must be based on an improvement that seems achievable to that student rather than an arbitrary one such as achieving 70%. If, for example, you offered an incentive for a student to bring her History mark from 75% to 80% while maintaining her 90% Math mark, you might see some impact.
For any incentive to work, the incentive has to have more perceived value than the effort to achieve the goal, and the goal has to have a reasonable probability of success in the eyes of the incentee. I think I learned this in economics class long ago.
Reward or financial incentive is a form of recognition of student progress/achievement. Often humans need evidence of their ability to move towards competency in the subject matter before intrinsic motivation can take hold. Evidence is comes through parental recognition, peer support, self awareness and community awareness.
Spending resources automating relevant recognition systems that are integrated with the LMS’s and SIS’s will make it easier to offer students frequent, consistent proof of incremental progress toward their academic goals.
With the growth in online learning, relevant feedback loops that promote communication and social learning become even more important to encouraging course completion and persistence.
John Bower
CEO, uBoost
This is a product of a sad, yet realistic truth. Money evidently serves as a better motivator than personal success. Clearly, students get more utility from getting paid for their work than if not. This incentive offered is a good way for students to figure out that the amount they are getting paid is greater than the opportunity costs they pay by studying harder and showing more dedication towards school.
However, an interesting fact is mentioned here where bribes or incentives work more with younger students. I place this reasoning on the contrast of ethical values between young minds and older ones. Younger students do not receive many opportunities that involve them getting paid, so when the situation comes, it is a no brainer for them. On the other hand, older students are more wise and mature when making this decision. Not only do they have a greater sense of honesty and self-respect.
Evidently, the opportunity costs of older students is higher than that of younger students, which is why most decide to pass on the bribe. They have more opportunities involving payment elsewhere.