Author Abstract
Roughly 20% of adults in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) lack basic numeracy and literacy skills. In the UK, many colleges offer fully government-subsidized adult education programs to improve these skills. Constructing a unique dataset consisting of weekly attendance records for 1,179 students, we find that approximately 25% of learners stop attending these programs in the first 10 weeks and that average attendance rates deteriorate by 20% in that time. We implement a large-scale field experiment in which we send encouraging text messages to students. Our initial results show that these simple text messages reduce the proportion of students that stop attending by 36% and lead to a 7% increase in average attendance relative to the control group. The effects on attendance rates persist through the three weeks of available data following the initial intervention.
Paper Information
- Full Working Paper Text
- Working Paper Publication Date: February 2015
- HBS Working Paper Number: 15-065
- Faculty Unit(s): Negotiation, Organizations & Markets