Incentives and Signals Can Improve College Success

We need to reformulate the college access issue to focus more on “access to preparation and success,” rather than the more traditional issue of access to a slot in postsecondary education.Student incentives and signals to students are important concepts to increase college completion.

Examples of incentives could be admission policies that reward students for completing numerous college preparation courses, or teacher professional development that helps increase the probability of students meeting college placement test standards. Both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are important components of motivating prospective college student behavior.

Signaling theory suggests that streamlined and aligned high quality and appropriate content messages have a positive impact on students’ learning and achievement, and that mixed and conflicting signals—the current state of affairs—have the opposite effect. School site educators, including but not limited to counselors, can be purveyors of information (e.g. signals) about what students need to know and be able to do in order to succeed at postsecondary education. Many secondary school teachers play a large role in providing signals, especially for high achieving students, but teachers do not know much about college placement exams at non selective colleges. Moreover, students get clearer signals if colleges communicate more about placement tests and not just how easy it is to get into their college. For more put "the bridge project" in Google and go to publications.

Labels: college information, college sucess