For college students who can choose between online and in-person sections, taking a course online lowers grades both in that course and in future courses¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r? · q3
Currency · newest study 2017 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? For students with access to both online and in-person options, grades are lower for the course taken online relative to in-person, and lower in future courses as well; the estimates may not apply to students for whom online courses are the only option. → Eric P. Bettinger 2017

Evidence¶

Eric P. Bettinger 2017¶

Eric P. Bettinger, Lindsay Fox, Susanna Loeb, Eric S. Taylor. (2017). Virtual Classrooms: How Online College Courses Affect Student Success. American Economic Review, vol. 107, no. 9. https://www.mathematica.org/publications/virtual-classrooms-how-online-college-courses-affect-student-success

q3 · i? · causal · r?

The key findings state that "Grades are lower both for the course taken online and in future courses," indicating the online format penalty carries over into subsequent coursework. The instrumental-variables estimates are, in the authors' words, "local average treatment effects for students with access to both online and in-person options; for other students, online classes may be the only option for accessing college-level courses." No statistics are printed on this page.

"Grades are lower both for the course taken online and in future courses."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Do learners do as well, and stay as long, in a fully online course as in the same course face to face? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 7 narrower claims that bear on it: 5 distinct studies (2 associational, 2 quant-synthesis, 1 causal), q2–q3, 2 of 5 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• The estimated online-course effects are local to students with access to both online and in-person options — related
• Online college courses are a rapidly expanding feature of higher education, with little prior research on their relative effects — a broader claim this one bears on
• Before this trial, online credit recovery was widely used despite no rigorous evidence on its relative efficacy versus face-to-face courses — a broader claim this one bears on
• Undergraduate course satisfaction dropped sharply after courses moved fully online during COVID-19, with very satisfied students falling from 51 percent to 19 percent — related
• Taking a course online instead of in person reduces student success and progress in college — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Students taking courses online are less likely to remain enrolled at the university — related
• First-semester transfer students taking one general education course persisted at rates 15-20% lower than similar non-takers, an effect absent when the course was taken in a later term — related