Having a teaching assistant of the same race leads to better grades, according to a new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“Results show a positive and significant increase in course grades when students are assigned TAs of a similar race/ethnicity,” researchers wrote in the study. “These effects are largest in classes where TAs are given advanced copies of exams and when exams had no multiple choice questions. We also find that assignment to similar race TAs positively affect both section and office hour attendance, suggesting that TA-student match quality and role model effects are the primary drivers of the results.”
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The study was authored by Lester Lusher and Scott Carrell with the University of California, Davis, as well as Doug Campbell with the New Economic School in Moscow.
The trio suggested that increasing same-race TAs could help raise college completion rates and close racial gaps in college completion.
Interestingly, TA race has no effect on whether students withdraw from a course or enroll in other courses in the same field.
The results should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, because the study used data from only one academic department at one public university, albeit a large and diverse one. The study is a good start for research on an interesting issue but shouldn’t be used to make definitive conclusions.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
