Ask and You Shall Receive? Gender Differences in Regrades in College

Abstract

Using administrative data from a large public university, we show that male students are 18.6 percent more likely than female students to receive favorable grade changes made by instructors. Surveys of students and instructors reveal that regrade requests are prevalent and that male students are more likely to ask for regrades on the intensive margin. We corroborate the gender differences in regrade requests in an incentivized controlled experiment: we find that males have a higher willingness to pay to ask for regrades. Almost a third of the gender difference is due to gender differences in beliefs and the Big Five traits. (JEL D82, D91, I23, J16)