Facultad de Economía
Facultad de Economía
How does the desegregation of elite schools impact academic achievement? And does desegregation affect students' interactions with different types of peers within their school? In this paper, I study a natural experiment at an elite university in Colombia where the number of low-income students tripled as a result of the introduction of the financial aid program Ser Pilo Paga. The average increase in the percentage of low income peers -9.5 percentage points- had modest to null impacts on wealthy students' academic performance. I shed light on the mechanisms behind this lack of peer effects by studying changes in social interactions using data on students' co-movements across campus captured by turnstiles located at all entrances. Desegregation led to increased connections between wealthy and low-income students. At least half of the increase in interactions between wealthy and low-income students, however, is explained by interactions of wealthy students with low-income but high-achieving students. These results suggest students diversify their interactions primarily among students with similar academic achievement levels.