Benefits from Taking a Private Tutorial Course for Exam Preparation? The Case of Macro Economics at Copenhagen Business School.

In this paper we analyze the effects of taking an extra private tutorial course on the passing probability and the grade in a course in Macroeconomics at the Business Diploma study program at Copenhagen Business School. The topic is of interest as the students are not supposed to need such an extra course in order to perform well at the exam but still more than 50 % of a cohort signs up for the courses. Our data come from the administrative systems at Copenhagen Business School and they are merged with survey data on student satisfaction and tutorial participation. Based on simple regression and probit models we get the quite surprising result that the participation effect is either negative or insignificant. Due to a potential problem of self selection, as it may be the weaker students who signs up for the courses, we also apply statistical models that take this fact into account. Still, our conclusions are not changed. For the models that take self selection into account we need an exogenous driver and we argue that the gender of the student can be used for this purpose.