The Impact of In-Class Time on the Academic Performance in the Introductory Finance Course

Abstract

We evaluate the impact of in-class time on the academic performance of business students enrolled in an introductory finance course. Contrary to our expectations, we observe a significant increase in the students’ academic performance when in-class time is reduced (as measured on a pre-test post-test basis). When we partitioned our sample by major, we find an increase in academic performance is significant for students majoring in finance or accounting.
We also find evidence that the degree of measured change in academic performance is driven by the student’s academic performance in the pre-core courses (e.g., accounting, economics, math, statistics etc.).