Can I Boost My GPA By Taking Online Classes? An Analysis of Online versus Traditional Class Outcomes for Five Finance Courses

Many educational institutions offer both online and traditional versions of the same course. A frequent concern of administrators, program directors, and instructors is whether students engage in platform arbitrage: choosing a particular platform (online vs. traditional) based solely on the prospects of receiving a higher course grade for a given level of effort. This article analyzes a ten-year panel of data for five university finance courses offered in both a traditional classroom setting and in an online format. Controlling for student characteristics that extant research has shown to have an effect on student learning, we find students who take online courses score the same or lower, on average, than those who take traditional courses.