"Placing students on probation increases the probability that they will drop out," Lindo said. "For those students who return to school, their GPA goes up by about 0.2 grade points." The real impact, he added, is seen in what happens to young men.
For men, academic probation doubles the likelihood that they will drop out of school -- from a 3 percent probability to a 6 percent probability, Lindo said.
Male students who had done above average work in high school but whose work triggered academic probation after their first year of college saw their probability of graduation drop by 14.5 percentage points, Lindo and colleagues found.
The study found no statistically significant effects on women or on male college students who had experienced lower-than-average grades in high school.
"Those with a history of greater success are more discouraged when they get placed on probation in college," Lindo said, adding that he was surprised by the discovery. "This may just be that it comes as a greater shock to students who been successful throughout their high-school careers."
Placing students on probation involves a tradeoff in terms of encouragement and discouragement, said Lindo, who began the study while a doctoral student at the University of California, Davis. He teamed with fellow UC-Davis doctoral student Nicholas J. Sanders and Philip Oreopoulos, professor of economics at the University of British Columbia who already had student data.
Jason M. Lindo of the University of Oregon briefly discusses his study of the impacts of academic probation on college students.
(Photo Credit: University of Oregon)
Jason M. Lindo, assistant professor of economics at the University of Oregon, has found that academic probation at the end of their freshman year increases the probability that men will drop out of college.
(Photo Credit: Photo by Jim Barlow)
Source: University of Oregon