Grades of attractive female students decline with online classes, study shows

Researchers examining the effect of student facial attractiveness on academic outcomes have found that when education is in-person, attractive students receive higher grades than the non-attractive ones. This is so in non-quantitative subjects in which teachers tend to interact more with students, compared to quantitative courses. 

The findings, according to Swedish experts based on a peer-reviewed study published by Elsevier, a global leader in information and analytics for health, and done under various forms of instruction using data from engineering students in Sweden, holds a similar view for both males and females.

“When instruction moved online during the coronavirus pandemic, the grades of attractive female students deteriorated in non-quantitative subjects. However, the beauty premium persisted for males, suggesting that discrimination is a salient factor in explaining the grade beauty premium for females only,” they observed. 

“Towards the end of the 2019–20 academic year, all Swedish universities switched to online teaching to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. The start date for these measures was March 17, 2020, and the measures were in place until the end of the 2020–21 academic year in May 2021.

Consequently, students who started the programme in 2018 had two online courses in their second year, whereas students starting in 2019 had two online courses in their first year, and eight online courses in their second year, “the paper highlights while pointing out that at the time of the switch, the first part of the spring semester had just finished, and the second part of the spring semester had not yet started. 

“Thus, there were no courses in which both on-campus and online teaching was used,” say the scientists in the study.

Beauty premium

They further add that the results suggest that beauty is positively related to academic outcomes, however, the results are only significant in non-quantitative courses, which to a greater extent rely on interactions between teachers and students. 

“The beauty premium on grades in non-quantitative subjects holds for both male and female students. Then, using the Covid-19 pandemic as a natural experiment, and utilising a difference-in-difference framework, we found that switching to full online teaching resulted in deteriorated grades in non-quantitative courses for attractive females.” 

However, they disclose that there was still a significant beauty premium for attractive males.

“Taken together, these findings suggest that the return to facial beauty is likely to be primarily due to discrimination for females, and the result of a productive trait for males. 

“An advantage with the empirical strategy of this paper is that the switch to online teaching during the pandemic enables us to more credibly isolate the effect of appearance,” the experts believe while explaining that this is because only the mode of instruction changed, and not the structure of the courses.

"Additionally, my identification strategy removes the problem of self-selection into courses," the lead researcher states.

(Read the full study here)

What Kenyan lecturers say

In an exclusive interview with the Nation, Ms Katherine Muhatia, a Journalism and Mass Communication senior lecturer at Multimedia University of Kenya, while dissecting the findings of the study, explained that despite the fact that there are students who stand out, the attractiveness of a student varies from one lecturer to another.

“Attractive to me means intelligent. However, there are those students that just stand out, the way they dress, do their hair or lipstick and so what might be attractive to me might not be attractive to someone else. Attractive could mean intelligent, eloquent in the way they present their work or their grasp on academic issues,” she said while disclosing that the findings of the study have been a hot topic of discussion among her colleagues, considering that many of the academic institutions in the country largely moved to virtual learning due to Covid-19 pandemic. 

“Some dons (lecturers) feel that it is very difficult and hectic to go through, say 100 scripts, just to look for that ‘attractive student’, academic environments are about engaging intelligently and for sure, an academically attractive student makes you look at their scripts in a ‘special way’.

Ms Christabel Mideva, a law lecturer at the University of Embu agrees with Ms Muhatia that in-person teaching helps put faces to scripts while marking, unlike virtual teaching, which takes away the faces of students because they do not turn on their cameras. 

“When classes are physical, you are able to pick up on a student who is attractive by virtue of being intelligent because they always want to engage lecturers even after class and compared to virtual classes, in –person classes have human interaction which creates a connection, the connection does not have to be emotional.”

Mr Kelvin Kariuki who is Ms Muhatia’s colleague though teaches at the faculty of engineering agrees with the findings. 

"I teach technical courses and female students are few. What I discovered is that boys are more active when it comes to on-line classes compared to girls. Whenever I see female students in my class in person it motivates me to teach better, but this does not mean I will favour them just because they look attractive, it’s just that my energy levels go up."

Dr Joshua Okemwa, a computer science lecturer in Nairobi also agrees with the findings of the study.

“The challenge with teaching virtually is that more tech-savy students have an upper-hand, grades of attractive students declined in my view because attractive female students need undivided attention and would like more in-person time for a personal touch with their facilitator for them to understand things better.”