Money, mentoring and making friends : the impact of a multidimensional access program on student performance

There is a well established socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment, despite much
effort in recent decades to address this inequality. This study evaluates a university access
program that provides financial, academic and social support to low socioeconomic status (SES)
students using a natural experiment which exploits the time variation in the expansion of the
program across schools. The program has parallels with US affirmative actions programs,
although preferential treatment is based on SES rather than ethnicity. Evaluating the
effectiveness of programs targeting disadvantaged students in Ireland is particularly salient given
the high rate of return to education and the lack of intergenerational mobility in educational
attainment. Overall, we identify positive treatment effects on first year exam performance,
progression to second year and final year graduation rates, with the impact often stronger for
higher ability students. We find similar patterns of results for students that entered through the
regular system and the ‘affirmative action’ group i.e. the students that entered with lower high
school grades. The program affects the performance of both male and female students, albeit in
different ways. This study suggests that access programs can be an effective means of improving
academic outcomes for socio-economically disadvantaged students.