Does Shadow Education Help Students Prepare for College?

25 Pages Posted: 28 Jan 2014

See all articles by Prashant Kumar Loyalka

Prashant Kumar Loyalka

Stanford University - Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Andrey Zakharov

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow)

Date Written: January 27, 2014

Abstract

High school students, across the world, prepare for college by participating in shadow education. Despite substantial investments in shadow education, however, little is known about whether it helps students prepare for college. The goal of our study is to provide rigorous evidence about the causal impacts of participating in shadow education on college preparation. We analyze unique data from Russia using a cross-subject student fixed effects model. We find that participating in shadow education positively impacts high-achieving students but not low-achieving students. Participating in shadow education further does not lead students to substitute time away from other out-of-school studies. Instead, the results suggest that low-achieving students participate in low-quality shadow education, which, in turn, contributes to inequality in college access.

Keywords: shadow education, private tutoring, college access, inequality, causal methods

JEL Classification: I21

Suggested Citation

Loyalka, Prashant and Zakharov, Andrey, Does Shadow Education Help Students Prepare for College? (January 27, 2014). Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 15/EDU/2014, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2385856 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2385856

Prashant Loyalka

Stanford University - Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies ( email )

Stanford, CA 94305
United States

Andrey Zakharov (Contact Author)

National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow) ( email )

Myasnitskaya street, 20
Moscow, Moscow 119017
Russia

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