Does Student Effort Respond to Incentives? Evidence from a Guaranteed College Admissions Program

This paper studies the effects of guaranteed college admission on student effort and achievement. In 1997, Texas enacted the “Top Ten Percent” law, which guarantees admission to any public college for students in the top ten percent of their high school class. In practice, eligible students become aware of their admission status at the end of their junior year in high school—more than 1 year prior to attending college. We use data from a large, urban school district and regression discontinuity methods to test for effects on effort. Our preferred estimates show that students who barely qualify for the admissions guarantee earn marginally lower grades and take fewer advanced courses in their senior year compared to students who do not qualify for guaranteed admission and learn their status in the final senior year term. We find qualitatively similar results when limiting our sample to finer bandwidths, although the estimates are imprecise.     

Cornerstones and keystones: Humanities for the gifted and talented

The Humanities as a curriculum provide a natural learning environment where gifted students have opportunities to make intellectual inquiries in every realm of human endeavors.     

The up-front legacies of France 2019: changing the face of ‘le foot féminin’

ABSTRACT

The drive to develop women’s football in France, a game 100 years old albeit one long-stigmatised, was thrust into high gear in 2011. Since then, a confluence of events and cultural changes, from on-field results and officials’ investment of greater resources to winning the 2019 World Cup host bid, greater mediatisation of women’s players, and more – including the spectacular 2010 meltdown of Les Bleus in South Africa – have combined to energise and grow the game. This newfound dynamism was unforeseen a decade ago and illustrates some of France’s biggest World Cup legacies: the up-front investments underpinning the sport’s development during the 2010s, and the ways the country has repackaged itself as a champion of women’s football and women in football, forever changing the face of ‘le foot féminin’.