Skills, expectations, and personality traits as determinants of academic achievement

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Markus Nagler; Professor Dr. Johannes Rincke
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: from 2020 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 450795009

Every year, around 30 percent of undergraduate students in German institutions drop out of college. The high share of students who drop out of college has been largely unaffected by several reforms of higher education in Germany. Dropping out of college typically leads to difficult personal situations, usually comprises lost lifetime, and implies social costs due to government-funded universities. This leads to the question what the determinants of academic success in higher education are. In our research proposal, we plan to study how students self-select into different subjects. We also plan to study whether personal traits predict success in higher education and to identify the main traits associated with a successful time at university. One could then use these findings to target measures to reduce the number of students who do not successfully graduate. We aim at answering three distinct but related research questions. First, we want to collect personal traits and analyze to what degree students select into different fields based on personality traits. Second, we want to analyze which traits predict study success. We are particularly interested in whether traits that are malleable at the time of university entry predict academic success, which could be used to design effective policies to reduce drop out. In addition, we are interested in whether across different subjects, similar traits predict study success. If not, this could be used to inform students of potentially better-fitting majors before they engage in courses that do not match their personality. This could be used to improve the matching between students and college degrees. In addition, we are interested in whether certain degrees that are thought to require special traits attract the kind of students that already feature these traits at baseline. For example, we will analyze whether law students have a particular sense of justice or are particularly pro-social. Third, we would like to contrast students’ traits at the beginning of their studies with students’ traits at graduation to analyze whether their traits change systematically withing subjects. We will implement our project using an online platform. On this platform, students answer validated questions on their personality traits. We aim at collecting personality traits of an entire cohort of students across all fields within the university. We will then connect this information with administrative data on students’ coursework and academic success. Along the course of their studies, we can then track students and determine the impact of personality traits on the students’ success at university.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Fabian Kosse