Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600

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Economics of Education Review

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev

The impact of international students on measured learning and

standards in Australian higher education
Gigi Foster ∗
UNSW School of Economics, Australian School of Business, Sydney 2052, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: International students, who are also often from non-English language speaking back-
Received 16 May 2011 grounds (NESB students), are an important source of revenue for Australian universities.
Received in revised form 21 March 2012 Yet little large-scale evidence exists about their performance once they arrive. Do these stu-
Accepted 22 March 2012
dents perform worse than other students in Australian undergraduate classrooms? What
happens to other students’ performance when these students are added to classrooms?
JEL classification:
I provide new empirical evidence on these questions using recent administrative panel
I21
J15
data from the business schools of two Australian Technology Network universities. Results
show strong and highly statistically significant main effects and spillover effects, raising
Keywords: concerns about the integration of international NESB students into the Australian tertiary
Educational economics environment.
Higher education © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Spillovers
International students
Australia

1. Introduction exports in 2007–2008 according to the Australian Bureau

Foreign students make up an increasing share of
Australian universities’ revenues, particularly in busi-
ness schools.1 April 2010 data from Australian Education
International show an 11.9% year-to-date increase in
enrolments of international students in Australian higher
education programs (AEI, 2010). Enrolment growth in the
‘Management and Commerce’ area, which attracts signif-
icant numbers of international students, was 12.6% over
this same period. Estimates by Access Economics for the
2007–2008 financial year put the contributions of inter-
national students at approximately 1% of Australian GDP
(AE, 2009). Travel services related to education, as a sole
category, totalled approximately 27% of Australian service
∗ Tel.: +61 2 9385 7472; fax: +61 2 9313 6337.
E-mail address: gigi.foster@unsw.edu.au
1 It would be appealing to partial out the effect of being of
Throughout the paper, I use the term ‘school’ to refer to a collection of
departments in related disciplines, known more commonly in Australia
as a ‘faculty’.
of Statistics data cited in that same report.
Because international students pay full fees to the insti-
tutions in which they enrol, they may be seen as a revenue
boon for both Australian universities and the broader
economy. Yet international students face several poten-
tial disadvantages in relation to local students in terms of
their likelihood of academic success. Differences in social
and academic culture, academic aptitude or preparation,
as well as inadequate language fluency, may all contribute
to worse performance by foreign students (Bradley, 2000;
Cheng & Leong, 1993; Lebcir & Wells, 2008; Stoynoff, 1997;
Zhang & Brunton, 2007). Speaking English in the home,
while uncommon amongst the international student pop-
ulation in Australia, overlaps with domestic student status
and hence varies independently of whether a student is
international or not. Unlike being foreign, English fluency
is a clear academic skill, and as such is used directly in
writing papers, reading texts and understanding lectures.
non-English-speaking background per se from the effects
on university performance of other factors related to being

0272-7757/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2012.03.003
588 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600
an international student (e.g., cultural factors, baseline aca-
demic preparation, or underlying aptitude).
Beyond the question of whether there are sheer
performance differentials between international, non-
English-speaking-background (NESB), and other student
groups, educational equity concerns would also lead us
to ask how the infusion of international and NESB stu-
dents into Australian higher education impacts upon the
marks of other students. Recent research (Gould, Lavy, &
Paserman, 2000; Jensen & Rasmussen, 2011) has shown
that concentrations of immigrant children in classrooms
are robustly negatively related to natives’ ultimate educa-
tional outcomes.2 These authors do not offer an explicit
causal explanation for their finding, but do note that the
immigrants in question were socio-economically stressed,
implying that this stress was somehow at play in the pro-
cess(es) that led to the effect they find. In the Australian
context, overseas students are newcomers too, and likely
to be ‘stressed’ compared to native students in a variety
of ways: almost certainly linguistically and culturally, and
perhaps also in terms of their academic background and/or
inherent academic ability. While increased cultural diver-
sity may aid learning, sharing a discussion group with peers
of lesser ability, worse preparation, or foreign cultures, or
who are less able to express themselves in English, may
produce a lower grade due to lower-quality or less effi-
cient peer-to-peer and/or tutor-to-student interactions in
class.3 These effects would most logically appear in an envi-
ronment where interactive activities are common, such as
a section, or ‘tutorial’ in Australian terminology.
There may also be spillover effects unrelated to learn-
ing. In particular, it is well-known both from anecdote and
in the education literature that many university courses are
graded on a curve.4 A strict course-specific grading curve
immediately implies that sharing a course with students
who perform at a lower level than oneself – in the absence
of any other effects – will produce a mechanical rise in
one’s own grade. This rise does not reflect better learn-
ing outcomes, but is only a mechanical reflection of the
2
The specific native/immigrant demographic dichotomy appears to be
important to the generalizability of these findings. Research using black-
white concentrations in U.S. schools (Guryan, 2004), for example, found
no effect of black student concentrations on white drop-out rates.
3
Many results in the literature on peer effects in higher education
classrooms would imply this type of effect (see, e.g., Arcidiacono, Foster,
Goodpaster, & Kinsler, in press; Foster & Frijters, 2010; Winston &
Zimmerman, 2004). Naturally, teacher effects based on immigrant sta-
tus may occur as well, and have been found empirically: using data from a
large public American university, Borjas (2000) finds that foreign-born
teaching assistants were associated with worse outcomes for domes-
tic students, compared to native TAs. Jacobs and Friedman (1988) finds
no overall effect, but some indication of the relevance of tutors’ English
language skills to students’ performance, when investigating the same
question using different U.S. data. Finally, such effects may flow through
differential expectations held by teachers for different types of students,
as contended by van Ewijk (2011). Teacher information is not available in
the data set used in this paper.
4
This was not always the case. See Small (1973), who also suggests
that the popularity of ‘criterion-based’ assessment (e.g., graduating stu-
dents who are alleged to possess certain ‘graduate qualities’ or ‘attributes’)
reflects a desire to return from grading on the curve towards a set of more
absolute assessment standards, as was more commonly used in the last
century and in antiquity.
mix of co-students combined with lecturers’ needs to keep
grade distributions across years and across courses roughly
equivalent. Mechanical ‘spillovers’ of this sort would arise
even from a more mild form of relative grading, such as
when instructors hesitate to fail more than some thresh-
old percentage of students enrolled in a course, perhaps in
order not to earn a reputation for being overly strict, or in
order not to be noticed and possibly called to account by
the university administration.
Hence, if international and/or NESB students perform
worse than other students and/or have negative spillovers
in the tutorial classroom, and if additionally course grades
are set in a manner that involves any measure of rela-
tive rather than absolute judgment, then the net impact
on grades of adding these students to a given course is
theoretically ambiguous.
Results show that both international students and NESB
students perform significantly worse than other students,
even controlling for selection into courses. Both effects
are large and persistent. Adding international or domestic
NESB students to a tutorial classroom leads to a reduction
in most students’ marks, and there is a particularly strong
negative association between international NESB student
concentrations in tutorial classrooms and the marks of
students from English-speaking backgrounds. Finally, con-
ditional on student covariates, tutorial composition effects,
course fixed effects, and many other controls, the impact on
marks of a high percentage of NESB students in a course is
positive. I argue that this finding may reflect supply-side
influences such as downward adjustments to the difficulty
of material or grading standards. Taken as a whole, the evi-
dence in this paper strongly indicates the need for better
integration of students from non-English speaking back-
grounds – particularly international NESB students.
1.1. International students in Australia
Australia’s geographical position makes it an attrac-
tive higher-education option for Asian students wishing
to obtain English-language degrees. However, none of
Australia’s universities appear in the top twenty or so
institutions worldwide, according to the most popular
university-ranking schemes (e.g., the Academic Ranking of
World Universities, the QS World University Rankings, and
the Times Higher Education World University Rankings).
This means that the ‘best and brightest’ Asian students
heading overseas for their undergraduate degrees are, on
average, likely to matriculate at an institution in the U.S. or
Europe rather than in Australia. As home-grown Asian uni-
versities rise in stature, Asian students in the ‘second tier’
of aptitude and/or general preparation for tertiary study
face the choice of whether to study domestically, or instead
to go abroad and enrol in a good but not elite institu-
tion. Australia’s geographic proximity to Asia makes it an
attractive target for students from that second tier down-
ward. The approximately 41 universities in Australia range
greatly in quality, and those whose data are analyzed in the
present study are part of the Australian Technology Net-
work and are placed near the middle of the pack, according
to rankings posted by the Australian Education Network.
There is no clear a priori reason to expect that international
 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600
students studying in these institutions (the majority of
whom are Asian) will be innately better or worse-prepared
for university study than domestic Australian students.
There has been very little large-scale quantitative anal-
ysis of the academic performance of international students
in the Australian context. In the largest study to date using
Australian higher education data, Olsen and Burgess (2006)
find no performance differentials between international
and local students. However, that study examined only
pass rates rather than the full distribution of marks, and
was based on aggregated data where other factors, such
as additional demographics, course type, and learning con-
text, were not controlled.
The university performance of international students
relative to domestic students should logically relate to
three classes of phenomena, once English language back-
ground is controlled: (1) their basic academic aptitude,
relative to that of domestic students; (2) the quality of
their preparation for university in their home country, rel-
ative to that provided domestically; and (3) the amount of
additional effort required for an international student to
overcome cultural and other obstacles that the domestic
student need not face in order to perform at an equivalent
level. The present paper does not attempt to disentangle
these three potential causes, but rather asks about asso-
ciations overall between international student status and
marks in the case of Australia, while looking independently
at English language background effects. Any remaining
association found between international student status and
marks or classroom spillovers could be due to any or all of
the above causes, including the quality of prior preparation
in English expression.
1.2. English language skills
Insufficient language fluency has been proposed by
many authors as the major barrier confronting inter-
national students. Lebcir and Wells (2008) suggest that
English skill is one of the important drivers of interna-
tional students’ academic performance. Using data from a
U.S. university, Lee and Anderson (2007) find that there is a
positive correlation between general language proficiency,
which is measured by the TOEFL score (a standardized test
of English fluency similar to the IELTS, used in Australian
undergraduate admissions decisions regarding foreign stu-
dents), and students’ writing performance, an important
input into success for much undergraduate assessment. As
English is used as the teaching language in the Australian
undergraduate classroom, it is reasonable to expect the
ability to speak and understand English to be positively
correlated with a student’s performance. Based on inter-
views with students at the University of Adelaide, Plewa
and Sherman (2007) find that both local and international
students with good language skills blame students with rel-
atively poor language skills for lack of creativity and slow
progress in their groups.
However, there is not complete agreement on this point.
Some researchers (Johnson, 1988; Light & Xu, 1987; Picard,
2007) argue that there is no significant correlation in
undergraduate student samples between English language
proficiency as measured on international tests like the
589
TOEFL or IELTS and either performance or intelligence, par-
ticularly when the threshold language requirement (e.g.,
TOEFL score) is high. While the results of such tests offer
a convenient measure for educational institutions wish-
ing to assess the language fluency of overseas candidates,
standardized test results may not be a reliable indicator
of a student’s true English skills. The simple indicator that
is used in the present paper and is not mechanically tied
to intelligence is whether a student speaks English in the
home. Importantly, this variable (like a TOEFL score) will
not pick up differences between students that relate to
their level of practice or familiarity with the everyday use
of English.
2. Data and methodology
This paper exploits a new panel data set on Australian
students enrolled in undergraduate programs within the
business schools of two universities in the Australian Tech-
nology Network. Data are available at the student-tutorial
level for the universe of students enrolled and taking
courses in these programs at any point during the autumn
and spring semesters of 2008, 2009, or 2010.
As noted briefly above, a ‘tutorial’ in Australia is equiv-
alent to a ‘section’ in North America. Frequently taught by
people termed ‘casual staff’5 or graduate students, the tuto-
rial is an opportunity for students to discuss and work on
course material and receive more personalized assistance
than is possible in lectures. Tutorials occur weekly, as do
lectures, for a particular undergraduate course; a typical
course includes 3 h of total face time (e.g., 2 h of lectures and
1 h of tutorials) each week for the duration of the semester,
which is between 13 and 15 weeks. The final mark that
serves as the dependent variable in this paper is awarded at
the course level, but any given student was enrolled in both
the course itself and a particular tutorial. The multi-level
tertiary learning structure combined with the panel nature
of the data make it possible to analyze simultaneously
the effects on final course mark of both course-specific
information and tutorial-specific information, in addition
to student-specific controls like demographics.
To create the data set, information from the enrol-
ment systems of each institution was merged with data
from students’ applications to university, resulting in a
final data set that includes detailed demographics (such as
age, gender, and other observable characteristics, includ-
ing international student status and whether the student
speaks English in the home) as well as detailed information
about which courses and tutorials each student took in each
covered semester, and what final percentage marks were
achieved in each.6 Throughout all analysis presented in this
5
These are fixed-term and/or non-tenure-track academics, roughly
equivalent to the American ‘adjunct’ or ‘part-time’ faculty member.
6
The term ‘mark’ is used in Australia to denote the percentage out of
100 that a student earns in a course. The term ‘grade’ is used to refer to
the letter grade associated with that percentage. In Australia, the letter
grades most commonly used and the range of marks to which they apply
are Fail (<50), Pass (50–64), Credit (65–74), Distinction (75–84), and High
Distinction (>84). ‘Marks’ (percentage scores) are used in all analysis in
this paper, and ‘grades’ (with the Australian meaning) are not used.
590 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600
paper, the outcome modeled is this final course mark, mea-
sured out of 100.7
2.1. Methodology
From the data described above, all student-tutorial
observations are kept for which the student was not
the sole student enrolled; for which the course enroll-
ment exceeded the enrollment in the tutorial (meaning
that courses with only one section were dropped); and
for which all core observable variables were available.
A dummy indicating that university matriculation took
place directly following graduation from an Australian high
school in the state of residence – as opposed to following
attendance at another high school, or as a consequence of
transferring from another institution or entering univer-
sity at an older age – is available for a subset of students.
This dummy along with a dummy indicating the absence of
this information are both included as control variables in
the analysis. Other control variables include course-level
effects (either varying across semesters, or fixed across
semesters, depending on the model); a dummy array for
the location of the tutorial;8 a dummy array for the exact
day and time that the tutorial began each week; course
size and tutorial size; a dummy array for the program of
study pursued by the student; and, as a general student-
ability control in many models, the average GPA earned
by the student in courses that semester not including the
course in which performance is being predicted. Further
controls that are constructed and included in the analysis
are institution of study, semester-by-year effects, course
load, discipline group (for regressions excluding course-
specific fixed effects), gender, age, and a dummy indicating
that the student was new to university that semester.
As the primary regressors of interest in the analysis of
spillovers, four variables are constructed at the student-by-
tutorial level: the percentages of international students and
NESB students within the course, and the same percent-
ages within the tutorial classroom, all of which exclude the
student himself. As noted above, the dependent variable
throughout all analysis in this paper is final course mark,
measured out of 100.
I first examine the performance differentials (both
uncorrected and regression-corrected for other observable
characteristics) of international, NESB, and other students
across all observed courses. Then, using the computed per-
centages of international and NESB students in each course
and each tutorial, I isolate the association of higher con-
centrations of both types of students on the marks of other
students sharing their tutorial and their course.
7
The final course mark is typically a composite of marks on ‘continuous
assessment’ (e.g., papers, midterms, and quizzes) and the mark on the final
examination. Although course-specific information about assessment mix
is not available in the data used here, the standard convention in most
undergraduate courses run by Australian business schools is to hold a
final examination which is worth between 40 and 70% of the course mark.
8
These variables indicate the actual physical room in which the tutorial
was held – e.g., Building 5, Room 301. This array of controls is intended
to pick up effects on marks due to shared phenomena at the tutorial level
such as poor lighting, stuffiness, or drafts, that may influence final course
marks.
The possibility of selection into courses and/or tutorials
is an important concern. The mechanical fact that obser-
vations in the data set disproportionately represent large
courses means that most of the data used in the estima-
tion comes from core courses (for example, Introductory
Accounting), which students by and large cannot avoid
taking at some point during their undergraduate careers.
Different programs of study do require slightly different
core courses, but each student’s program of study can be
observed and controlled using dummy variables. Course-
specific fixed effects (e.g., a fixed effect for ‘Introductory
Accounting’) can also be included in models featuring
course composition variables on the right-hand side, due
to the variation across semesters in the composition of any
given course.
Selection into tutorials is more problematic. There are
significant constraints placed on most students’ schedules,
and generally no information is available in advance about
which tutorials will be taught by which teachers. However,
students are by and large able to select their tutorials sub-
ject to the constraints they face, with early enrollees likely
to have a wider array of choices than later enrollees. This
may result in later enrollees, who may also be less con-
scientious students, being clustered into certain ‘left over’
tutorials. If it is furthermore the case that international or
NESB students are also likely to be late enrollees, such that
the percentage of such students within any given tutorial
is negatively related to the average unobserved conscien-
tiousness of its students, then we would expect downward
pressure on the estimate of the impact of tutorial-level con-
centrations of international or NESB students on marks. To
address these concerns, the physical location of the tuto-
rial, the day of the week it was held, and its exact start
time are all controlled using dummy variable arrays in
the models. However, tutorial-level fixed effects cannot
be controlled because doing so prevents the simultaneous
inclusion of tutorial-specific composition variables, which
multiply the estimation targets. Any causal interpretation
of the results found in regard to tutorial composition effects
should therefore be viewed as conditional upon the com-
prehensiveness with which the set of controls included
capture the unobserved selection mechanisms at play.9
9
Although this would not permit the estimation of the association with
marks of being international or NESB oneself, another approach to puri-
fying the composition effect estimates of selection bias in this context
would be to control for student-specific fixed effects, thereby estimating
the effects of classroom composition only within student. While this dras-
tically reduces the underlying variation in the explanatory variables used
to estimate the composition effects at both the course level and the tutorial
level, it is conceptually appealing due to the much lower possibility of any
significant selection issue remaining to contaminate the estimates. Fol-
lowing the suggestion of a referee, I attempted to do this. With more than
120,000 observations and close to 18,000 fixed effects (including student,
course, and tutorial location, day, and time effects), however, the model
was inestimable on the full data set using conventional software. Esti-
mation was only possible by running the model separately for different
sub-samples of the data (defined by time-frames, genders, and demo-
graphics). In these specifications, the positive linear course-composition
effects shown in the main results below were in evidence for several
sub-samples, though they were not always significant and for some sub-
samples they were of the opposite sign; and the tutorial-composition
effects were highly variable in terms of both sign and significance. I take
 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600 591

Table 1
Student-tutorial sample: summary statistics.

Mean Std dev Min Max

Panel A
Mark 61.03 (14.80) 1 100
International (yes = 1) .30 – 0 1
NESB (yes = 1) .47 – 0 1
NESB international (yes = 1) .29 – 0 1
Percent international in tutorial .30 (.25) 0 1
Percent NESB in tutorial .47 (.25) 0 1
Percent NESB intl in tutorial .29 (.25) 0 1
Percent international in course .30 (.19) 0 1
Percent NESB in course .47 (.19) 0 1
Percent NESB intl in course .29 (.19) 0 1
Number of students in tutorial 25.95 (10.02) 2 102
Number of students in course 346.15 (237.25) 3 1017

Mark % intl in tutorial % NESB in tutorial % intl in course % NESB in course

Panel B
Mark 1.00 – – – –
Percent international in tutorial −.09*** 1.00 – – –
Percent NESB in tutorial −.07*** .86*** 1.00 – –
Percent NESB intl in tutorial −.09*** .99*** .87*** – –
Percent international in course −.08*** .77*** .68*** 1.00 –
Percent NESB in course −.07*** .68*** .76*** .89*** 1.00
Percent NESB intl in course −.08*** .76*** .69*** 1.00*** .91***

Statistics are calculated across the 122,694 student-tutorial level observations for the sample used to produce the final column of Table 4. ‘NESB’ stands for
‘non-English language speaking background’; ‘intl’ stands for ‘international’.
***
p < 0.001.

2.2. Data description
Table 1 shows simple summary statistics and correla-
tions at the student-tutorial level for the main analysis
sample of 122,694 observations, representing 15,249 stu-
dents. Panel A shows that the average final course mark in
the sample is just over 61%, and the percentages of inter-
national and NESB students experienced by students in
classrooms average 30% and 47% respectively. A tutorial
consists of 25 students, on average; the average enrolment
in a course is almost 350 students.
Panel B shows strong negative raw correlations between
mark and both international student status and NESB status
at the student-tutorial level. There are also strong negative
correlations at this level between mark and all variables
capturing the percentages of international and NESB stu-
dents in classrooms. Finally, it is clear from the patterns of
correlations in this panel that whereas virtually all inter-
national students in the sample are also NESB, there is a
reasonable percentage of NESB students who are not inter-
national. This percentage is 35% in the sample.
3. Results: main effects
In the data used for this paper, international and NESB
students generally fare worse in terms of raw marks.10
from this exercise that insufficient within-student variation remains in the
sub-samples, after absorbing this large number of fixed effects, to estimate
interpretable composition effects.
10
Fig. 3 in Appendix A shows simple histograms of marks, at the
student-by-tutorial level, for international versus non-international stu-
dents. Fig. 4 then shows analogous histograms for NESB versus non-NESB
students. Both comparisons illustrate that the density is thicker both
Table 2 shows that raw marks vary significantly by inter-
national and NESB status at the student level, with both
international and NESB students performing worse on
average.
The patterns shown in Table 2 persist when other
aspects of the student and his learning environment are
controlled. The first column of Table 3 shows robust evi-
dence of lower marks for international and NESB students –
by 2.5–3.5 points each on the 1-to-100 marking scale – even
controlling for institution, semester, student demograph-
ics (age and gender), new student status, university entrant
status (same-state high school leaver or other entrant),
course load, program of study,11 course and tutorial size,
tutorial location and day/time, and discipline group of the
course.
Moreover, these effects are not due to selection into
courses, nor do they disappear after a student’s first
semester. Columns 2 and 3 of Table 3 include interactions
below 50 (a bare pass) and just above 50 for both international and NESB
students than for other students, while marks of the latter groups cluster
more heavily in the upper ranges.
11
It is important to note that the Australian higher education system
by and large does not follow the liberal arts tradition. Australian univer-
sity students come to university having already identified and enrolled
in a particular program leading to a particular degree, such as Bachelor
of Business (Marketing) or Bachelor of Accounting, and must enrol in a
far narrower suite of courses, proscribed by their program, than a typical
American undergraduate. Most Australian undergraduate degrees require
three years of full-time study to complete, and require the student to enrol
in very few courses managed outside the school (i.e., the collection of
departments, such as Economics, Marketing, and Management) running
the program. This is why the sample used in this paper represents a fairly
complete picture of the courses taken by students enrolled in undergrad-
uate programs run by the business schools of the two institutions.
592 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600

Table 2
Student-level averages.

Panel A International Domestic

Mean Std dev N Mean Std dev N

Mark 57.70 (11.32) 4872 61.55 (12.35) 10,377
Age 22.45 (2.52) 4872 22.05 (4.97) 10,377
Gender (female = 1) .52 – 4872 .54 – 10,377
New student (yes = 1) .31 – 4872 .24 – 10,377
Number of tutorials in sample 7.75 (4.25) 4872 8.30 (4.62) 10,377

Panel B NESB ESB

Mean Std dev N Mean Std dev N

Average mark 58.42 (11.51) 7291 62.07 (12.48) 7958
Age 22.42 (3.61) 7291 21.95 (4.91) 7958
Gender (female = 1) .54 – 7291 .53 – 7958
New student (yes = 1) .27 – 7291 .25 – 7958
Number of tutorials in sample 8.07 (4.40) 7291 8.17 (4.62) 7958

Panel C NESB international ESB domestic, NESB domestic, and ESB

international

Mean Std dev N Mean Std dev N

Mark 57.75 (11.22) 4740 61.49 (12.39) 10,509
Age 22.44 (2.50) 4740 22.05 (4.95) 10,509
Gender (female = 1) .52 – 4740 .54 – 10,509
New student (yes = 1) .29 – 4740 .25 – 10,509
Number of tutorials in sample 7.79 (4.24) 4740 8.27 (4.63) 10,509

Statistics are calculated across the 15,249 student-level observations used to produce the final column of Table 4. ‘NESB’ stands for ‘non-English language
speaking background’; ‘ESB’ stands for ‘English language speaking background’.

Table 3
Baseline marks equations.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

International −2.779 ***

−2.291 ***
−2.355 ***
−2.561***
(0.27) (0.29) (0.29) (0.28)
International* −2.128*** −0.553
new student (0.40) (0.41)
NESB −3.315*** −3.484*** −3.368*** −3.387***
(0.24) (0.25) (0.25) (0.24)
NESB* 0.722* 0.364
new student (0.36) (0.35)
NESB* −5.449***
international (0.24)
NESB* −3.395***
domestic (0.24)
Female 1.913*** 1.916*** 1.953*** 1.963*** 1.921***
(0.18) (0.18) (0.17) (0.17) (0.18)
Age 0.073** 0.074** 0.079** 0.078** 0.056*
(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03)
New student −0.084 0.393 −0.641* −0.768*** −0.439*
(0.16) (0.22) (0.26) (0.19) (0.18)

Course-by-semester fixed effects? No No Yes Yes Yes

Adj. R-sq 0.096 0.097 0.162 0.161 0.366
Obs 125,214 125,214 125,214 125,214 122,694

The dependent variable is final course mark. Institution, semester by year, program of study, high school leaver status, course load, and tutorial size, location,
and starting time and day effects are controlled in all regressions. Discipline group is also controlled in columns 1 and 2, using nine categories (Accounting,
Banking, Business, Economics, Law, Marketing, Mathematics, Management, and Other), as is course size. Columns 3–5 control for course-by-semester fixed
effects. Column 5 also adds a control for the GPA of the student calculated across all other courses in the current semester. ‘NESB’ stands for ‘non-English
language speaking background’. Standard errors are clustered at the student level. Full results appear in Appendix A.
*
p < 0.05.
**
p < 0.01.
***
p < 0.001.
 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600 593

of international and NESB student status with whether the final mark was observed. Tutorial concentration effects are
student is new to university. Working from the results in included to capture any learning spillovers that may occur
column 3, where student selection into particular courses within classrooms, whereas course concentration variables
is controlled using course-by-semester fixed effects, an are intended to capture any course-wide spillovers from
international student in his first semester at university is international and/or NESB student concentrations onto all
estimated to perform about 2.9 marks lower than a sea- students’ marks (for example, through relative marking).
soned non-NESB domestic student, and even after the first Because of the significant overlap between international
semester, about 80% of this differential remains. For NESB and NESB student status, it is impossible to estimate inde-
students, the story is even worse: in the first semester the pendent effects of both sets of concentration variables in
average gap in marks between NESB and seasoned non- the same regression. To address this problem, additional
NESB domestic students is about 3 points, and the gap specifications are then run with concentration variables at
widens to almost 3.4 points after the first semester. both the tutorial and course levels constructed for NESB
In column 4 of Table 3, the same basic pattern is domestic and NESB international students, with the left-
confirmed using indicators constructed differently: one out category being English-speaking students of all types
indicator for NESB international students, and one for (both international, of whom there are very few non-NESB
NESB domestic students, with the left-out category being students, and domestic). All regressions include course
English-speaking students of all types. As expected, NESB fixed effects, as well as extensive arrays of controls at the
international students perform even worse compared to tutorial and student levels. Table 4 presents these results.
English-speaking students than NESB domestic students,
and both groups of NESB students experience significantly
lower marks than students who speak English in the Table 4
home.12 Adding composition effects on marks.
Finally, in column 5 of Table 3, in addition to course-
(1) (2) (3) (4)
by-semester fixed effects, one final control variable is
added to the specification in column 1: the average final International −2.390*** −2.467***
(0.28) (0.28)
mark obtained by the student in all other courses in that
NESB −3.359*** −3.346***
semester. This reduces the sample size slightly since all (0.24) (0.24)
students enrolled in only one course in a given semester % intl −3.198***
are excluded, but the result is the same: international and in tutorial (0.28)
% intl 5.227***
NESB students both perform significantly worse than other
in course (0.84)
students. The similar pattern of results in this column com- % NESB −3.010***
pared to column 1 is also suggestive of differences in the in tutorial (0.29)
skills and abilities required to succeed in different courses % NESB 5.425***
observed in the sample. If the attributes required for suc- in course (0.87)
NESB* −5.456*** −5.456***
cess were identical across courses, then no fixed student
international (0.24) (0.24)
characteristics should remain significant in this equation NESB* −3.436*** −3.430***
once the balance of GPA that semester is controlled.13 domestic (0.25) (0.25)
% NESB intl −3.674*** −3.404***
in tutorial (0.31) (0.75)
4. Results: composition effects (% NESB intl −0.220
in tutorial)2 (0.81)
% NESB intl 5.883*** −0.936
This section focusses on variables that capture the
in course (0.90) (2.24)
percentages of NESB and international students in the (% NESB intl 8.261**
tutorial and course in which the student earning a given in course)2 (2.53)
mark was enrolled.14 Student-by-course mark equations % NESB domestic −0.952* 3.643***
are re-estimated including these additional covariates con- in tutorial (0.44) (0.87)
(% NESB domestic −8.349***
structed at the level of the tutorial and course in which the
in tutorial)2 (1.34)
% NESB domestic 4.406** −3.928
in course (1.54) (4.12)
12
These significant downward performance effects persist if we instead (% NESB domestic 20.231*
predict simple passage of courses, using a logistic MLE model. in course)2 (9.91)
13
One other possibility is that marks are largely a function of course- Adj. R-sq 0.359 0.358 0.358 0.358
specific luck, but GPA in other courses is highly significant in the equation Obs 122,694 122,694 122,694 122,694
(see full results in Appendix A), making this seem unlikely. Student-by-
semester ‘luck’ effects are certainly possible, however. The dependent variable is final course mark. Institution, semester by year,
14
See Appendix A for graphical distributions of these variables in program of study, GPA of the student calculated across all other courses in
Figs. 5 and 6. It appears in the data that international student concen- the current semester, course load, course fixed effects, and tutorial size,
trations in tutorials are more uneven (with zero international students in location, and starting time and day effects are controlled in all regres-
15% of tutorials) than NESB student concentrations because of program- sions. ‘NESB’ stands for ‘non-English language speaking background’; ‘intl’
of-study and course selection effects. Specifically, international students stands for ‘international’. Standard errors are clustered at the student
are far less likely to study law, and more likely to study accounting, bank- level. Full results appear in Appendix A.
*
ing, business, and marketing, than other students. This may be the result p < 0.05.
**
of visa regulations, university marketing messages to potential overseas p < 0.01.
***
students, or other factors. p < 0.001.
594 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600
Column 1 of Table 4 shows the impact of concentrations
of international students in the tutorial and the course. The
results in column 1 suggest that being in a tutorial with a
larger percentage of international students is significantly
worse for one’s mark. Going from a tutorial with the aver-
age percentage of international students (30%) to one with
10 percentage points more international students is esti-
mated to yield about a .32 point reduction in final course
mark. This implies that in-class learning may be diminished
with the addition of international students to a tutorial
classroom.
The percentage of international students in the course as
a whole, by contrast, is estimated to matter positively for
marks. Column 1 of Table 4 shows that holding constant
own international and NESB student status, the percent-
age of international students in the tutorial, and all other
controls, the marks of students in courses where the per-
centage of international students is 10 percentage points
higher than average are estimated to be .52 points higher on
average than those of students in courses with the average
percentage of international students. If we do not con-
trol for course fixed effects, this buoying effect is not as
strong, implying that student selection into certain courses
is important in this context.15 This is preliminary evidence
in support of a relative marking effect or other supply side
influence on student performance.
An identical analysis is undertaken next on the impact
on final course marks of NESB student concentrations,
and results are shown in column 2 of Table 4. Results
indicate similarly-sized negative effects on marks from
higher concentrations of NESB students in tutorials, as
well as similarly-sized positive effects on marks from high
concentrations of NESB students in courses. Naturally how-
ever, since a large percentage of NESB students are also
international, either the English language aspect or the
international student aspect may be driving these effects.
This pattern again appears to support a supply-side effect
on marks.
To further investigate these patterns, an analogous set
of regressions is run where concentration variables for
two sets of students – international NESB students, and
domestic NESB students – are included simultaneously.
Results are reported in columns 3 and 4 of Table 4. The
negative association of own NESB status with marks,
regardless of whether one is international or domestic, is
once again clearly apparent in column 3. Furthermore, the
negative effect of international and NESB students within a
tutorial remains, and is estimated to be driven by students
who are both international and from non-English language
speaking backgrounds. High domestic NESB student per-
centages within tutorials still negatively impact student
marks, but international NESB students yield a particularly
strong negative spillover within the tutorial classroom. In
regard to course-wide concentration effects, the results in
column 3 of Table 4 indicate that both international and
15
Specifically, this pattern indicates that international students are
present in higher concentrations in courses where worse marks are
observed.
100
80
(mean) mark
60
40
20
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1
(mean) intl
Mark by percent international (course level)
Fig. 1. Average marks in courses, by percent international students.
NESB student percentages within the course appear to
produce an upward buoying effect on marks.
Finally, to examine whether there are significant nonlin-
earities in these effects, column 4 of Table 4 shows results
from a model in which squared concentration variables
are included in addition to allowing main linear effects.16
Results show that the negative effect of the percentage of
NESB international students within the tutorial is fairly well
captured by a linear model: the squared term is insignifi-
cant. By contrast, the positive effect on marks associated
with a higher percentage of international NESB students
in the course as a whole is indeed nonlinear: the squared
term is positive and highly significant, whereas the main
effect is not. This pattern suggests that the effect of course-
level percentages will be lower when only a small fraction
of the course’s enrolment is made up of international NESB
students than when the course already has a large frac-
tion of such students, whereas adding such students to
tutorials has the same negative effects on marks no mat-
ter if it is the first or the last such student to be added.
This makes intuitive sense under the interpretation that
effects stemming from tutorial percentages reflect endoge-
nous learning dynamics resulting from piecemeal changes
in the tutorial classroom environment, whereas effects
stemming from course-wide concentrations are reflecting
wholesale changes to material, lecture delivery, or marking
that become more and more necessary to implement with
the presence of more and more students who warrant their
implementation.
If international and NESB students perform worse on an
individual basis than other students, then in the absence
of grading to a curve one would logically expect that
courses in which there are large proportions of such stu-
dents should post lower average marks. Figs. 1 and 2 show
average marks in courses plotted against the percentage of
each type of student in the course. The size of each bub-
ble is proportional to the total enrolment in the course.
These figures show little evidence of a downward adjust-
ment in average marks as the percentage of international
or NESB students in a course rises above about 20%. One
16
I thank an anonymous referee for suggesting this specification.
 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600 595

Yet does this buoying effect apply equally to all types

100

of students? To examine this question, Table 5 presents

estimation results from models of average marks within
a tutorial amongst different groups of students, regressed
80

against the percentages of international NESB and domes-

tic NESB students in the tutorial and the course of which it
(mean) mark

was part. Columns 1 and 2 use average marks of students of

60

English-speaking backgrounds within the given tutorial as

the dependent variable; columns 3 and 4 use average marks
of NESB international students; and columns 5 and 6 use
40

average marks of NESB domestic students. Aggregated ver-

sions of all variables used in prior regressions are included,
and columns 2, 4, and 6 additionally include squared con-
20

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 centration variables in order to capture nonlinearities in

(mean) no_eng
Mark by percent NESB (course level)
Fig. 2. Average marks in courses, by percent NESB students.
possible explanation for this, consistent with the regres-
sion results reported above, is that the downward pressure
on the grade distribution that results when international
and/or NESB students are added to classrooms is partly
compensated for by downward adjustments to grading
standards or delivered material, buoying up the marks dis-
tribution as a whole. The desire to keep certain aspects of
marks distributions looking similar across course offerings
may provide a free ride to students – potentially, both for-
eign and domestic – in courses with high percentages of
international and/or NESB students.
the effects of interest. All regressions include course fixed
effects, course and tutorial size variables, and tutorial day,
time and location variable arrays, and are weighted by size
of tutorial.
The previous negative spillover effect of international
NESB students at the tutorial level is still in evidence, but
this effect is strongest by far on the marks of other types
of students: those from English-speaking backgrounds
and those who are domestic NESB students. Further-
more, underscoring previous results, high concentrations
of domestic NESB students in the tutorial are found to be
associated with lower marks, but this effect is far smaller
than the effect of international NESB student concentra-
tions within tutorials and is also significant only with
respect to the marks of domestic ESB students. Hence, of
all three student types, international NESB students appear
to feel the smallest degree of negative spillovers from high

Table 5
Average marks equations for student subgroups.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Dep. var: Average marks of ESB students Average marks of NESB intl students Average marks of NESB domestic students

% NESB intl −5.563*** −5.489*** −1.015*** −0.250 −5.310*** −3.313***

in tutorial (0.14) (0.33) (0.19) (0.54) (0.33) (0.79)
(% NESB intl −0.146 −0.633 −2.370*
in tutorial)2 (0.42) (0.53) (0.94)
% NESB intl 3.826*** −1.509 8.375*** 8.563*** −0.670 4.067
in course (0.41) (0.95) (0.54) (1.55) (1.08) (2.67)
(% NESB intl 7.307*** −0.212 −6.033
in course)2 (1.16) (1.59) (3.10)
% NESB domestic −1.934*** 0.737 −0.412 5.162*** −0.797 3.923***
in tutorial (0.20) (0.40) (0.32) (0.63) (0.45) (1.03)
(% NESB domestic −5.101*** −10.699*** −7.360***
in tutorial)2 (0.67) (1.00) (1.42)
% NESB domestic 5.931*** 1.858 1.288 −12.417*** 4.171* −2.937
in course (0.71) (1.82) (1.15) (3.08) (1.92) (6.50)
(% NESB domestic 10.321* 35.010*** 13.488
in course)2 (4.68) (7.76) (15.06)

Adj. R-sq 0.673 0.674 0.657 0.659 0.575 0.576

Obs 66,580 66,580 36,608 36,608 21,913 21,913

In all cases, the dependent variable is the average (within tutorial) final course mark for the indicated group of students. Regressions reported in columns 2,
4, and 6 are respectively equivalent to those reported in columns 1, 3, and 5, except that the former include squared concentration variables. Course fixed
effects are controlled in all regressions. Also controlled are effects for institution, semester-by-year, course size, tutorial size, location, day of week and
start time, and tutorial-wide averages of the following items across all students of the given demographic type whose average mark within that tutorial is
being predicted: gender; age; new student status; course load; program of study indicators for the seven programs of study with the largest percentages
of international students; indicators for high school leaver status and the absence of high school information as used in prior regressions; and average GPA
in other concurrent courses. ‘NESB’ stands for ‘non-English language speaking background’; ‘ESB’ stands for ‘English language speaking background’; and
‘intl’ stands for ‘international’.
*
p < 0.05.
***
p < 0.001.
596 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600
concentrations of NESB students in tutorials. When added
to tutorials, they also deliver the largest negative spillovers
onto other students.
Course-wide concentration effects display an interest-
ing pattern. The percentage of international NESB students
in a course is estimated to have a very large positive impact
on the tutorial-level average marks of international NESB
students themselves, and a smaller but still significant pos-
itive impact on the marks of ESB students. The course-wide
percentage of international NESB students does not matter
significantly for the marks of domestic NESB students. This
implies that the upward buoying effect, presumably due
to downward adjustments in marking standards, material
selection, or delivery when more international NESB stu-
dents are added to courses only affects the average marks
of the NESB international students themselves (primarily)
and of English-speaking students (to a lesser extent). A sim-
ilar pattern of influence is found for the concentrations of
domestic NESB students in the course: a positive effect for
students of the same type (i.e., domestic NESB) and for ESB
students, with international NESB students far less affected
by concentrations of domestic NESB students in the
course.
Turning to the even-numbered columns of Table 5, the
nonlinear pattern found in previous results is also in evi-
dence here for domestic ESB students. Such students feel
a similar negative effect from each international NESB stu-
dent added to a tutorial, whereas the upward buoying effect
of the course-wide percentage of international NESB stu-
dents becomes stronger the more of such students are
added to a course. By contrast, international NESB students
themselves feel a fairly linear upward buoying effect as
their percentage in a course increases.
Overall, these patterns point to an upward buoying
influence on most students’ marks when a given course has
a high enrolment of students from non-English speaking
backgrounds. Logic suggests that this is not due to learning
– after all, these effects are found from variation in stu-
dent percentages at the course level, not at the tutorial
level, and NESB students of all types exhibit lower base-
line marks than other students. Instead, two explanations
seem most congruent with the facts. First, it may be that
lecturers adjust the presentation style or the difficulty of
material endogenously when faced with large concentra-
tions of such students in a given course, making it easier
to obtain a higher mark in the course. Second, at the stage
where assignments, final exams or term papers are marked,
a large number of papers that are poorly written may make
it difficult for markers to uphold the same standards that
they would apply if papers were better written. This may
mean both that all poorly-written papers are marked more
easily than they would be otherwise, and that a relatively
well-written paper (most likely from a student of English
speaking background) is given a higher mark than it would
have been given, had it not stood in comparison to so many
poorly-written papers.
5. Conclusion
Using new multi-institutional panel data on Australian
undergraduates studying in business schools, I find strong
statistical evidence that both international students and
students from non-English speaking backgrounds earn
persistently lower marks than other students. Both inter-
national students and NESB students perform significantly
worse than other students, even controlling for selection
into courses. Both effects are large and persist into students’
later semesters at university, but NESB status predicts
more of a reduction in own mark than international sta-
tus and becomes even more of a hindrance after the first
semester.
The paper’s second main result is that adding interna-
tional or domestic NESB students to a tutorial leads to a
reduction in most students’ marks, and this is particularly
the case for international NESB student concentrations.
This effect is strongest as felt by students from English-
speaking backgrounds. Given that the main effect on one’s
own marks of being an international or NESB student is neg-
ative, strong, and statistically significant, a logical inference
is that placing these lower-performing students into tuto-
rial classrooms with other students would have, if not a
negative effect, at least a non-positive effect on those other
students’ learning. I therefore interpret the negative effect
of tutorial-level percentages of international NESB students
as a direct negative spillover within tutorial classrooms,
that may stem from changes in tutorial dynamics due to the
mix of students present that, on balance, hinder learning.
While English fluency problems could partly explain this
result, the pattern of estimates – i.e., far stronger negative
spillover effects from international NESB student concen-
trations than from domestic NESB student concentrations
– is consistent with the hypothesis that cultural factors
associated with NESB status other than English language
competency play an important role in shaping the learning
context at the tutorial level.
The third main result in the paper is that the presence
of more NESB students in a course buoys up the marks of
all students in that course. Conditional on student covari-
ates, tutorial composition effects, course fixed effects, and
an array of other student and tutorial-level controls, the
impact on marks of a high percentage of NESB students
in a course is positive. Based on the foregoing evidence
regarding negative performance differentials and negative
spillovers within tutorial classrooms, this positive effect
of course percentages seems unlikely to reflect a learn-
ing effect. Rather, it may reflect supply-side influences,
such as downward adjustments to the difficulty of material
or grading standards applied when large concentrations
of such students are present in a course. Both material
selection and final decisions about course marks typically
occur for the entire course all at once, rather than tutorial-
by-tutorial. In either of those activities, an adjustment by
the teacher to accommodate a larger fraction of lower-
performing students is quite plausible.
Taken as a whole, the evidence in this paper strongly
indicates the need for better integration of students from
non-English speaking backgrounds – particularly inter-
national NESB students – into the Australian tertiary
education environment. I conclude that Australian univer-
sities should consider carefully whether they are directing
sufficient attention and resources towards improving the
English fluency and cultural assimilation of these students.
 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600 597

Acknowledgments
0

.04
I thank the University of South Australia, the University

.03
of Technology Sydney, and the Australian Research Council

.02
(Grant number DP0878138). I acknowledge the research
assistance of Fei Qiao and Sam Trezise. Special thanks are

.01
due to Peter Antony and Graeme Poole for extracting the

Density
0
1
data used in this paper.

.04
.03
Appendix A.

.02
Fig. 3 shows simple histograms of marks, at the student-

.01
by-tutorial level, for international versus non-international

0
0 50 100
students. Fig. 4 then shows analogous histograms for NESB mark
versus non-NESB students. Graphs by intl

Fig. 5 shows the distribution of the percentage of inter-

national students in tutorials, across all tutorials in the Fig. 3. Marks: international (bottom) versus non-international (top) stu-
main analysis sample; Fig. 6 shows the analogous distri- dents.
bution for the percentage of NESB students in tutorials.
Tables 6–8 show complete results of the regressions
appearing in Tables 3–5, respectively, with the exception

Table 6
Baseline marks equations: full results.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

International −2.779*** −2.291*** −2.355*** −2.561***

(0.27) (0.29) (0.29) (0.28)
International* −2.128*** −0.553
new student (0.40) (0.41)
NESB −3.315*** −3.484*** −3.368*** −3.387***
(0.24) (0.25) (0.25) (0.24)
NESB* 0.722* 0.364
new student (0.36) (0.35)
NESB* −5.449***
international (0.24)
NESB* −3.395***
domestic (0.24)
Female 1.913*** 1.916*** 1.953*** 1.963*** 1.921***
(0.18) (0.18) (0.17) (0.17) (0.18)
Age 0.073** 0.074** 0.079** 0.078** 0.056*
(0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03)
New student −0.084 0.393 −0.641* −0.768*** −0.439*
(0.16) (0.22) (0.26) (0.19) (0.18)
In-state −0.698 −0.709 −0.770 −0.758 −0.760
high school (0.63) (0.63) (0.62) (0.62) (0.62)
No high school 0.885 0.831 0.338 0.145 0.476
information (0.59) (0.59) (0.60) (0.60) (0.60)
GPA in other −2.309***
courses (0.02)
Tutorial size 0.033*** 0.034*** 0.043*** 0.043*** 0.053***
(0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01)
Course size −0.005*** −0.005*** 0.645 0.643 0.047
(0.00) (0.00) (0.33) (0.33) (0.30)
Courseload 0.841*** 0.820*** 0.827*** 0.789*** 0.806***
(0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09)
Institution −8.674* −9.044* 288.055* 287.341* 7.703
(4.21) (4.21) (139.61) (140.18) (5652.85)
Constant 63.642*** 63.653*** −249.535 −248.711 43.864
(3.58) (3.58) (154.27) (154.89) (7412.93)

Course-by-semester fixed effects? No No Yes Yes Yes

Adj. R-sq 0.096 0.097 0.162 0.161 0.366
Obs 125,214 125,214 125,214 125,214 122,694

This table replicates Table 3 but provides estimation results for more variables. All coefficient estimates except for those associated with fixed effect arrays
are reported. Standard errors are clustered at the student level.
*
p < 0.05.
**
p < 0.01.
***
p < 0.001.
598 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600

Table 7
0 Adding composition effects on marks: full results.
.04

(1) (2) (3) (4)

.03

International −2.390*** −2.467***

.02

(0.28) (0.28)
NESB −3.359*** −3.346***
.01

(0.24) (0.24)
Density
0

1 % intl −3.198***
in tutorial (0.28)
.04

% intl 5.227***
.03

in course (0.84)
% NESB −3.010***
.02

in tutorial (0.29)
.01

% NESB 5.425***
in course (0.87)
0

0 50 100
mark
NESB* −5.456*** −5.456***
Graphs by no_eng international (0.24) (0.24)
NESB* −3.436*** −3.430***
domestic (0.25) (0.25)
Fig. 4. Marks: NESB (bottom) versus non-NESB (top) students. % NESB intl −3.674*** −3.404***
in tutorial (0.31) (0.75)
(% NESB intl −0.220
in tutorial)2 (0.81)
% NESB intl 5.883*** −0.936
in course (0.90) (2.24)
(% NESB intl 8.261**
in course)2 (2.53)
% NESB domestic −0.952* 3.643***
in tutorial (0.44) (0.87)
(% NESB domestic −8.349***
15

in tutorial)2 (1.34)
% NESB domestic 4.406** −3.928
in course (1.54) (4.12)
Percent

(% NESB domestic 20.231*

10

in course)2 (9.91)
Female 1.920*** 1.921*** 1.931*** 1.930***
(0.18) (0.18) (0.18) (0.18)
Age 0.057* 0.056* 0.056* 0.056*
5

(0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03)

New student −0.441** −0.476** −0.515** −0.533**
(0.17) (0.17) (0.17) (0.17)
In-state −0.676 −0.675 −0.673 −0.679
0

0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1
intlpc_t
high school (0.63) (0.63) (0.63) (0.63)
No high school 0.617 0.651 0.470 0.485
information (0.59) (0.59) (0.59) (0.59)
Fig. 5. Proportion of international students in tutorials. GPA in other −2.345*** −2.345*** −2.345*** −2.346***
courses (0.02) (0.02) (0.02) (0.02)
Tutorial size 0.043*** 0.042*** 0.043*** 0.038***
(0.01) (0.01) (0.01) (0.01)
Course size 0.001 0.001 0.001 −0.000
(0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00)
Courseload 0.798*** 0.804*** 0.761*** 0.762***
(0.09) (0.09) (0.09) (0.09)
Institution 2.628 2.543 2.742 2.705
(.) (3689.93) (4875.37) (.)
Constant 53.547 52.500 52.514 53.786
(3968.09) (1453.61) (1890.37) (.)

Adj. R-sq 0.359 0.358 0.358 0.358

Obs 122,694 122,694 122,694 122,694
Percent

This table replicates Table 4 but provides estimation results for more vari-
ables. All coefficient estimates except for those associated with fixed effect
arrays are reported. Standard errors are clustered at the student level,
and the lack of clustered standard error estimates on some coefficients
results from the saturation of the model. Standard errors can be recov-
0 1 2 3 4

ered by assuming independence within student, and on the variables of

main interest, they are roughly one-third the size of the clustered standard
errors reported above.
0 .2 .4 .6 .8 1 *
p < 0.05.
nesbpc_t **
p < 0.01.
***
p < 0.001.
Fig. 6. Proportion of NESB students in tutorials.
 G. Foster / Economics of Education Review 31 (2012) 587–600 599

Table 8
Average marks equations for student subgroups: full results.

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Dep. var: Average marks of ESB students Average marks of NESB intl students Average marks of NESB domestic students

% NESB intl −5.563*** −5.489*** −1.015*** −0.250 −5.310*** −3.313***

in tutorial (0.14) (0.33) (0.19) (0.54) (0.33) (0.79)
(% NESB intl −0.146 −0.633 −2.370*
in tutorial)2 (0.42) (0.53) (0.94)
% NESB intl 3.826*** −1.509 8.375*** 8.563*** −0.670 4.067
in course (0.41) (0.95) (0.54) (1.55) (1.08) (2.67)
(% NESB intl 7.307*** −0.212 −6.033
in course)2 (1.16) (1.59) (3.10)
% NESB domestic −1.934*** 0.737 −0.412 5.162*** −0.797 3.923***
in tutorial (0.20) (0.40) (0.32) (0.63) (0.45) (1.03)
(% NESB domestic −5.101*** −10.699*** −7.360***
in tutorial)2 (0.67) (1.00) (1.42)
% NESB domestic 5.931*** 1.858 1.288 −12.417*** 4.171* −2.937
in course (0.71) (1.82) (1.15) (3.08) (1.92) (6.50)
(% NESB domestic 10.321* 35.010*** 13.488
in course)2 (4.68) (7.76) (15.06)
Female 3.578*** 3.539*** 1.678*** 1.658*** 1.194*** 1.198***
(0.11) (0.11) (0.14) (0.14) (0.18) (0.18)
Age 0.308*** 0.309*** −0.202*** −0.200*** −0.083*** −0.084***
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.03) (0.02) (0.02)
New student −0.635*** −0.717*** −0.587*** −0.600*** −0.839*** −0.824***
(0.12) (0.12) (0.15) (0.15) (0.24) (0.24)
In-state −0.191 −0.266 3.125*** 3.166***
high school (0.30) (0.30) (0.51) (0.50)
No high school 0.180 0.144 5.000*** 4.957***
information (0.26) (0.26) (0.46) (0.46)
GPA in other −2.534*** −2.534*** −2.602*** −2.609*** −2.462*** −2.461***
courses (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.03)
Tutorial size 0.040*** 0.038*** 0.049*** 0.043*** 0.046*** 0.039***
(0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.01) (0.01)
Course size −0.001** −0.001*** 0.002*** 0.002*** −0.000 −0.000
(0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00) (0.00)
Course load 1.170*** 1.185*** 2.684*** 2.579*** 1.645*** 1.645***
(0.05) (0.05) (0.13) (0.13) (0.09) (0.09)
Institution 13.817*** 13.065*** −1.707 −2.518 −8.478 −8.751
(2.09) (2.09) (5.73) (5.72) (8.77) (8.77)
Constant 44.784*** 46.038*** 49.574*** 51.246*** 75.834*** 76.052***
(0.97) (0.98) (2.12) (2.15) (7.67) (7.69)

Adj. R-sq 0.673 0.674 0.657 0.659 0.575 0.576

Obs 66,580 66,580 36,608 36,608 21,913 21,913

This table replicates Table 4 but provides estimation results for more variables. All coefficient estimates except for those associated with fixed effect arrays
are reported.
*
p < 0.05.
**
p < 0.01.
***
p < 0.001.

of results for the arrays of fixed effects which are too volu-
minous to report.
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