Bunching in Higher Education: unintended effects of the ECTS?
The institutional structure of study programs and official recommendations on how students should organize their studies likely influence students' credit acquisition cost function, planning and behaviour -- consequently, these institutional features can limit the potential of some students and affect time-to-degree. In this study, we examine whether institutional design, specifically the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) leads to bunching in the number of credits per semester. We use data from various sources: administrative student-level data from the examination offices of two universities, as well as nationally representative data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) and the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS:12/17).
We present evidence for significant bunching at 30 attempted and obtained credits per semester in European higher education. We argue that this is due to institutional design based on the ECTS with the study structure entirely aimed at a “typical’’ student obtaining 30 credits. This structure promotes bunching, as it creates (i) a kink in the cost of obtaining credits beyond 30, and (ii) a reference point at 30 credits. The missing mass above 30 credits suggests that a substantial share of students is held back by these rigid features, increasing time-to-degree and causing potentially large individual and societal costs. we further present evidence showing that institutional setup is the main driver behind the observed credits per semester distributions while showing that ability has a limited role. For the US, where the institutional design is much more flexible, we do not observe comparable bunching.
In a companion field experiment, we tested whether an informational intervention encouraging students to take more than 30 credits would change their bahavior, ultimately decreasing the magnitude of bunching in credits per semester. We find that the intervention had no significant effects on changing the behavior of the treatment group, likely because this does not sufficiently alter the ECTS credit cost structure and reference point influence.
We present evidence for significant bunching at 30 attempted and obtained credits per semester in European higher education. We argue that this is due to institutional design based on the ECTS with the study structure entirely aimed at a “typical’’ student obtaining 30 credits. This structure promotes bunching, as it creates (i) a kink in the cost of obtaining credits beyond 30, and (ii) a reference point at 30 credits. The missing mass above 30 credits suggests that a substantial share of students is held back by these rigid features, increasing time-to-degree and causing potentially large individual and societal costs. we further present evidence showing that institutional setup is the main driver behind the observed credits per semester distributions while showing that ability has a limited role. For the US, where the institutional design is much more flexible, we do not observe comparable bunching.
In a companion field experiment, we tested whether an informational intervention encouraging students to take more than 30 credits would change their bahavior, ultimately decreasing the magnitude of bunching in credits per semester. We find that the intervention had no significant effects on changing the behavior of the treatment group, likely because this does not sufficiently alter the ECTS credit cost structure and reference point influence.