TY - JOUR

T1 - Scaling up and Crowding out

T2 - How German Adult Education Centers Adapted Course Offers to Refugee Integration

AU - Thomsen, Stephan L.

AU - Weilage, Insa

N1 - We are grateful to the German Institute for Adult Education (Deutsches Institut für Erwachsenenbildung, DIE) for providing the VHS statistics, as well as to Daniela Imani, Andreas Martin, and an anonymous referee. The study has benefitted from discussion at the research seminar of the Faculty of Economics and Management, Leibniz University Hannover.

PY - 2023/2

Y1 - 2023/2

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - adult education

KW - crowding out

KW - integration

KW - language courses

KW - refugees

KW - regional context

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122078068&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/07417136211068861

DO - 10.1177/07417136211068861

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85122078068

VL - 73

SP - 60

EP - 80

JO - Adult education quarterly

JF - Adult education quarterly

SN - 0741-7136

IS - 1

ER -