Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
消除大学学分障碍：AP考试费用减免在何处及对谁有效
Removing barriers to college credits: Where and for whom AP exam fee waivers work
摘要
We study the effects of North Carolina’s Advanced Placement (AP) exam fee-waiver policy on exam participation and potential college-credit attainment conditional on AP enrollment. Using student-course level administrative data, we first exploit within-student variation among students enrolled in multiple AP courses during both pre- and post-waiver periods. We find that fee waivers increased exam participation by 2.1 percentage points but did not significantly increase the share of AP enrollments yielding an exam score of 3 or higher, a common threshold for college-credit eligibility. This average null, however, masks a 3-percentage-point increase in the share of low-SES AP enrollments yielding a score of 3 or higher, narrowing the baseline attainment gap by 15 percent. Using the full sample of AP enrollments and a difference-in-differences framework, we then show that enrollments with the lowest predicted exam-taking propensity absent the waiver experienced the largest gains in both exam participation and potential college-credit attainment, suggesting that universal fee waivers generate larger benefits where barriers to AP exam participation are most likely to bind. Under illustrative assumptions, our welfare calculations indicate that the policy’s benefits far exceed its costs.
中文摘要
我们研究了北卡罗来纳州大学先修课程（AP）考试费用减免政策对考试参与率的影响，以及在AP选课条件下对潜在大学学分获取的影响。利用学生—课程层面的行政数据，我们首先在学生内部进行差异分析，样本为在费用减免政策实施前后均选修多门AP课程的学生。我们发现，费用减免使考试参与率提高了2.1个百分点，但并未显著提高AP选课中获得3分及以上成绩的比例——3分通常是获得大学学分资格的常见门槛。然而，这一平均意义上的零效应掩盖了低收入社会经济地位（SES）学生AP选课中获得3分及以上成绩比例提高3个百分点的事实，使基线成绩差距缩小了15%。随后，我们使用全部AP选课样本和双重差分框架表明，在若无费用减免政策时预测考试参与倾向最低的选课，在考试参与率和潜在大学学分获取方面的提升幅度最大，这表明普遍性费用减免在AP考试参与障碍最可能起约束作用的地方产生了更大的收益。在示例性假设下，我们的福利计算表明，该政策的收益远超其成本。