Does Teacher Quality Affect Student Performance? Evidence from an Italian University

Posted: 3 Jul 2016

See all articles by Maria De Paola

Maria De Paola

Università degli Studi della Calabria - Department of Economics and Statistics

Date Written: January 29, 2009

Abstract

In this paper we analyse whether the characteristics of university teaching staff matter with regards students' performance and interest in the discipline. We use data on about one thousand students enrolled on the first level degree course in Business and Economics at a medium sized Italian University. Thanks to the random assignment of students to different teaching sections during their first year, we are able to analyze the effect that teachers with different characteristics, in terms of experience and research productivity, produce both on students' performance, measured in terms of the grades obtained at subsequent exams and courses chosen. Our results suggest that teacher quality has statistically significant effects on students' grades on subsequent courses. These effects are also robust after controlling for unobserved individual characteristics. On the other hand, we find less clear evidence when relating teacher quality to student involvement with a subject. It emerges that research productivity does not produce a statistically significant effect on the probability of a student's undertaking additional courses in a subject, while more experienced teachers have a negative impact. However, also this effect becomes not statistically significant when we run separate regressions for different disciplines.

Keywords: teaching quality, student performance

JEL Classification: JEL: H52, I2

Suggested Citation

De Paola, Maria, Does Teacher Quality Affect Student Performance? Evidence from an Italian University (January 29, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1334529

Maria De Paola (Contact Author)

Università degli Studi della Calabria - Department of Economics and Statistics ( email )

via Ponte Bucci
Arcavacata di Rende, Cosenza 87036
Italy

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