College Course Shutouts
What happens when college students cannot enroll in the courses they want? Using conditional random assignment to oversubscribed courses at a large public university, we find that a course shutout reduces the probability that a student ever takes any course in the corresponding subject by 30%. Course shutouts are particularly disruptive for female students, reducing women's cumulative GPAs, probability of majoring in STEM, on-time graduation, and early-career earnings. In contrast, shutouts do not appear to be disruptive to male students' long-run outcomes, with one exception—shutouts significantly increase the probability that men choose a major from the business school.
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Copy CitationKevin J. Mumford, Richard W. Patterson, and Anthony Yim, "College Course Shutouts," NBER Working Paper 33800 (2025), https://doi.org/10.3386/w33800.
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