Can mentoring help female assistant professors?

Economics isn’t known for gender balance among senior faculty. So six years ago, the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession started a randomized controlled trial of a mentoring program for young, female economists. The results?

After five years the 2004 treatment group averaged .4 more NSF or NIH grants and 3 additional publications, and were 25 percentage points more likely to have a top-tier publication. There are significant but smaller effects at three years post-treatment for the 2004 and 2006 cohorts combined.

The NBER paper is here. Ungated here.

Another astonishing fact that may not immediately occur: a Committee subjected itself to a randomized control trial. This is what I love about my profession: the sneaking suspicion it was once colonized by Vulcans.