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The Impact of Professor Reputation and Section Attributes on Student Course Selection

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Abstract

In this paper, we analyze how students select particular sections of required undergraduate courses at a regional public university in Texas. Specifically, we study how perceived instructor quality and other course section attributes, such as meeting time, impact enrollment. We find strong evidence that publicly available information about professor reputation influences students’ enrollment decisions. Sections taught by instructors who are more highly rated fill up more quickly, for our subset of required undergraduate courses. Sections taught by instructors rated as easier are also estimated to fill up more rapidly, in some specifications. We also find some evidence that the meeting times and days alsoinfluence enrollment decisions in systematic ways.

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Notes

  1. There is some evidence that students at some elite institutions appear hungry for information about perceived instructor quality. Yale University recently shut down a student created website that allowed users to more easily compare student evaluations of courses. (Zimmerman 2014).

  2. Other rules of thumb are sometimes used. VIFs thresholds of 2.5 and 10 are also commonly used thresholds to denote potential problems of multicollinearlity (O’brien 2007).

  3. As OQ was collected before the enrollment period, there is no way for the PctCap to have any causal relationship towards OQ,.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Finance, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX, USA

    Christopher L. Brown & Stephen M. Kosovich

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  1. Christopher L. Brown
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  2. Stephen M. Kosovich
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Correspondence to Stephen M. Kosovich.

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Brown, C.L., Kosovich, S.M. The Impact of Professor Reputation and Section Attributes on Student Course Selection. Res High Educ 56, 496–509 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-014-9356-5

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