TY - JOUR AU - Angrist,Joshua AU - Lang,Daniel AU - Oreopoulos,Philip TI - Lead Them to Water and Pay Them to Drink: An Experiment with Services and Incentives for College Achievement JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 12790 PY - 2006 Y2 - December 2006 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12790 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12790.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Joshua Angrist Department of Economics MIT, E52-353 50 Memorial Drive Cambridge, MA 02142-1347 Tel: 617/253-8909 Fax: 617/253-1330 E-Mail: angrist@mit.edu Daniel Lang The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto 252 Bloor Street West Toronto, ON M5S 1V6 E-Mail: dlang@oise.utoronto.ca Philip Oreopoulos Department of Economics University of British Columbia 997-1873 East Mall Vancouver, BC V6T, 1Z1 CANADA Tel: 416/978-4407 E-Mail: philip.oreopoulos@ubc.ca AB - High rates of attrition, delayed completion, and poor achievement are growing concerns at colleges and universities in North America. This paper reports on a randomized field experiment involving two strategies designed to improve these outcomes among first-year undergraduates at a large Canadian university. One treatment group was offered peer advising and organized study group services. Another was offered substantial merit-scholarships for solid, but not necessarily top, first year grades. A third treatment group combined both interventions. Service take-up rates were much higher for students offered both services and scholarships than for those offered services alone. Females also used services more than males. No program had an effect on grades for males. However, first-term grades were significantly higher for females in the two scholarship treatment groups. These effects faded somewhat by year's end, but remain significant for females who planned to take enough courses to qualify for a scholarship. There also appears to have been an effect on retention for females offered both scholarships and services. This effect is large enough to generate an overall increase in retention. On balance, the results suggest that a combination of services and incentives is more promising than either alone. ER -