TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Bratti, Massimiliano
AU  - Granato, Silvia
AU  - Havari, Enkelejda
        TI  - Another Chance: Number of Exam Retakes and University Students' Outcomes
        PY  - 2024/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17400
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17400
        AB  - Exams play a key role in a student's learning process at university, and their organization may affect student performance. A high number of retakes, for instance, could encourage procrastination or reduce effort for each attempt. This article investigates the effects of a policy change at a major Italian university that reduced the number of exam retakes allowed per subject from six to three. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find that this policy significantly improved first-year outcomes, including lower dropout rates, higher exam pass rates, and increased credit accumulation. 
We conduct several robustness checks showing that only a small fraction of these improvements can be attributed to changes in the average quality of students enrolled following the reform. Additionally, the policy contributed to an increase in on-time graduation rates, which was the main objective of the reform, without harming student GPA. This study shows that implementing a cost-effective policy, such as limiting exam retakes, can substantially enhance student progression, reducing age at graduation.
        KW  - retakes
KW  - exams
KW  - student outcomes
KW  - university
KW  - Italy
        ER  -