TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Ellis, Jimmy R.
AU  - Gershenson, Seth
        TI  - LATE for the Meeting: Gender, Peer Advising, and College Success
        PY  - 2016/May/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 9956
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp9956
        AB  - Many male and first-generation college goers struggle in their first year of postsecondary education. Mentoring programs have been touted as a potential solution to help such students acclimate to college life, yet causal evidence on the impact of such programs, and the factors that influence participation in them, is scant. This study leverages a natural experiment in which peer advisors (PA) were quasi-randomly assigned to first-year university students to show that: (i) male students were significantly more likely to voluntarily meet their assigned PA when the PA was also male and (ii) these compliers were significantly more likely to persist into the second year of postsecondary schooling. We find no effect of being assigned to a same-sex PA on female students' use of the PA program, nor do we find any evidence that the PA program affected subsequent academic performance (GPAs).
        KW  - retention
KW  - gender gap
KW  - mentoring
KW  - peer advising
KW  - higher education
KW  - demographic mismatch
        ER  -