When high school students do poorly on college-placement exams and learn they must take a remedial course, they are no less likely to enroll in college than students who score just above the remediation placement cutoff.
The findings are published in an article in the latest issue of Education and Finance Policy, the official journal of the Association for Education and Finance.
Lead author Paco Martorell, an assistant professor of education at the University of California-Davis, said it’s hard to tell why students aren’t discouraged after finding out they aren’t college-ready, but it may be that they don’t fully understand the implication.
“Sometimes students are so interested in getting a degree that it is not is much of hindrance,” Mr. Martorell said in an interview.