Advising, gender, and performance: Evidence from a university with exogenous adviser–student gender match

Abstract

This paper provides the first causal evidence on the effects of gender match in the adviser–student relationship (as opposed to the well‐researched instructor–student relationship) on student outcomes along both the intensive and extensive margins. We analyze administrative data from a university with a faculty adviser assignment policy that makes gender pairing between advisers and students exogenous. We find that matching female students with female adviser has a positive and significant effect on retention and grade point average (GPA) upon graduation, particularly for students with academic challenges and non‐science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students. For female students with below‐median high school GPA, gender match is found to raise the odds of graduate school enrollments.