Scaling up and Crowding out

How German Adult Education Centers Adapted Course Offers to Refugee Integration

authored by

Stephan L. Thomsen, Insa Weilage

Abstract

Language skills are central to refugee integration and the availability of language courses could thus be a limiting factor. We explore how the most important provider of language courses in Germany, adult education centers (VHS), adapted their course supply to the refugee wave of 2015/2016. Our results highlight two channels through which the local environment can affect opportunities for participation in adult learning: First, exploiting the quasi-random allocation of refugees to counties, we causally estimate by how much VHS scaled up their German language course (DAF) supply as a reaction. Moreover, we show that DAF courses were created almost exclusively at the cost of other courses, that is, by crowding out. Second, we uncover heterogeneities in scaling success. VHS with more prior DAF course experience and larger VHS adapted better, which shows the relevance of initial conditions in course offers.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Economic Policy

Type

Article

Journal

Adult Education Quarterly

Volume

73

Pages

60-80

No. of pages

21

ISSN

0741-7136

Publication date

02.2023

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Education

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1177/07417136211068861 (Access: Open)