Rational Students and Resit Exams

Abstract

Resit exams – extra opportunities to do an exam in the same academic year – are widely prevalent in European higher education, but uncommon in the US. I present a simple theoretical model to compare rational student behavior in the case of only one exam opportunity versus the case of two exam opportunities. Numerical examples for a wide range of plausible parameter values show that a second exam opportunity increases the ultimate passing probability only slightly, but strongly reduces average total student effort.

Keywords: frequency of examinations, education production function, rationality

JEL Classification: D01, I21