Abstract:
Professors and instructors are a chief input into the higher education production process, yet we know very little about their specific role in promoting student success. There is growing evidence that teacher quality is an important determinant of student achievement in K12, with some school districts identifying and rewarding teachers with high value-added. Yet relatively little is known about the importance of or correlates of instructor effectiveness in postsecondary education or whether colleges could improve student performance by reallocating instructors.

In this paper we measure variation in postsecondary instructor effectiveness and estimate its relationship to overall and course-specific teaching experience. We explore this issue in the context of a very large, for-profit university that offers both online and in-person courses in a wide array of fields and degree programs. We focus on instructors in the college algebra course that is required by all BA degree programs. We find substantial variation in student performance across instructors both in the current class and subsequent classes. Variation is larger for in-person classes, but is still substantial for online courses.