<< Back to Faculty Benjamin Castleman Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy Education & Training Ed.D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2013 A.B. Honors, Environmental Studies, Brown University, 2000 617-299-0279 castleman@virginia.edu Ruffner Hall 262 Curriculum Vitae @bencastleman Courses taught Education Policy Areas of focus Education UVA partners EdPolicyWorks: Center for Education Policy and Workforce Competitiveness School of Education and Human Development Ben Castleman is an Associate Professor of Education and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Ben’s research focuses on policies to improve college access and success for low-income students. Several of his papers examine innovative strategies to deliver high-quality information about the college-going process to low-income students and their families, and to ease the process of students and families getting professional support when they need assistance. He has conducted several randomized trials to investigate how the offer of additional support during the summer after high school impacts the rate and quality of low-income students’ college enrollment. In addition, Ben uses quasi-experimental methods to study the impact of state and federal need-based grant programs on students’ long-term collegiate outcomes. His research has been featured on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, as well as in Time Magazine, USA Today, and the Huffington Post. Related Content How behavioral science could get people back into public libraries News What keeps someone from activating their library card or returning a book? Brooklyn Public Library worked with behavioral science experts including Batten professor Benjamin Castleman and alum Katharine Meyer (MPP '16) to find out. Castleman: To Level the Playing Field in College Completion: Invest in Advising News According to new research from Batten's Benjamin Castleman and Texas A&M University's Andrew Barr, intensive college advising leads to large increases in the share of low-income high school seniors that earn their bachelor's degree. Castleman and Colleague Shed Light on Rewards of 'Credential Stacking' News The impact of “credential stacking” among community college students had long been of interest to Batten’s Ben Castleman and his colleague Katharine Meyer, but they became even more curious about it during the pandemic. Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials Research With rapid technological transformations to the labor market along with COVID-19 related economic disruptions, many working adults return to college to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we provide the first causal estimates of credential “stacking” among working adults. Pushing College Advising Forward: Experimental Evidence on Intensive Advising and College Success Research Growing experimental evidence demonstrates that low-touch informational, nudge, and virtual advising interventions are ineffective at improving postsecondary educational outcomes for economically-disadvantaged students at scale. Intensive in-person college advising programs are a considerably higher-touch and more resource intensive strategy; some programs provide students with dozen of hours of individualized assistance starting in high school and continuing through college, and can cost thousands of dollars per student served. UVA Researchers Offer Data on One of Higher Education’s Most Dramatic Shifts News In a new study, Batten’s Ben Castleman, along with his collaborators Gaby Lohner and Kelli Bird from the UVA School of Education and Human Development, investigated how the shift to online learning during COVID-19 has affected student success. Batten Expert Chats: “How Has Online Learning During COVID-19 Impacted Academic Performance?” with Ben Castleman Event In one of the most abrupt upheavals in the history of American education, schools across the country have responded to COVID-19 by shifting to online instruction. How has this affected the millions of students now taking classes virtually? Batten professor Ben Castleman, along with his collaborators Gaby Lohner and Kelli Bird from the UVA School of Education and Human Development, will take on this question in the latest edition of Batten Expert Chats. Nudges Don’t Work When the Benefits Are Ambiguous: Evidence from a High-Stakes Education Program Research The Post-9/11 GI Bill allows service members to transfer generous education benefits to a dependent. We run a large scale experiment that encourages service members to consider the transfer option among a population that includes individuals for whom the transfer benefits are clear and individuals for whom the net-benefits are significantly more ambiguous. We find no impact of a one-time email about benefits transfer among service members for whom we predict considerable ambiguity in the action, but sizeable impacts among service members for whom education benefits transfer is far less ambiguous. Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from a Statewide Community College System Research The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in Spring 2020. Using a difference-in-differences framework that leverages within-course variation on whether students started their Spring 2020 courses in person or online, we estimate the impact of this shift on the academic performance of Virginia’s community college students. We find that the shift to virtual instruction resulted in a 6.7 percentage point decrease in course completion, driven by increases in both course withdrawal and failure. Faculty experience teaching a course online did not mitigate the negative effects of moving to virtual instruction. View All
How behavioral science could get people back into public libraries News What keeps someone from activating their library card or returning a book? Brooklyn Public Library worked with behavioral science experts including Batten professor Benjamin Castleman and alum Katharine Meyer (MPP '16) to find out.
Castleman: To Level the Playing Field in College Completion: Invest in Advising News According to new research from Batten's Benjamin Castleman and Texas A&M University's Andrew Barr, intensive college advising leads to large increases in the share of low-income high school seniors that earn their bachelor's degree.
Castleman and Colleague Shed Light on Rewards of 'Credential Stacking' News The impact of “credential stacking” among community college students had long been of interest to Batten’s Ben Castleman and his colleague Katharine Meyer, but they became even more curious about it during the pandemic.
Stacking the Deck for Employment Success: Labor Market Returns to Stackable Credentials Research With rapid technological transformations to the labor market along with COVID-19 related economic disruptions, many working adults return to college to obtain additional training or credentials. Using a comparative individual fixed effects strategy and an administrative panel dataset of enrollment and employment in Virginia, we provide the first causal estimates of credential “stacking” among working adults.
Pushing College Advising Forward: Experimental Evidence on Intensive Advising and College Success Research Growing experimental evidence demonstrates that low-touch informational, nudge, and virtual advising interventions are ineffective at improving postsecondary educational outcomes for economically-disadvantaged students at scale. Intensive in-person college advising programs are a considerably higher-touch and more resource intensive strategy; some programs provide students with dozen of hours of individualized assistance starting in high school and continuing through college, and can cost thousands of dollars per student served.
UVA Researchers Offer Data on One of Higher Education’s Most Dramatic Shifts News In a new study, Batten’s Ben Castleman, along with his collaborators Gaby Lohner and Kelli Bird from the UVA School of Education and Human Development, investigated how the shift to online learning during COVID-19 has affected student success.
Batten Expert Chats: “How Has Online Learning During COVID-19 Impacted Academic Performance?” with Ben Castleman Event In one of the most abrupt upheavals in the history of American education, schools across the country have responded to COVID-19 by shifting to online instruction. How has this affected the millions of students now taking classes virtually? Batten professor Ben Castleman, along with his collaborators Gaby Lohner and Kelli Bird from the UVA School of Education and Human Development, will take on this question in the latest edition of Batten Expert Chats.
Nudges Don’t Work When the Benefits Are Ambiguous: Evidence from a High-Stakes Education Program Research The Post-9/11 GI Bill allows service members to transfer generous education benefits to a dependent. We run a large scale experiment that encourages service members to consider the transfer option among a population that includes individuals for whom the transfer benefits are clear and individuals for whom the net-benefits are significantly more ambiguous. We find no impact of a one-time email about benefits transfer among service members for whom we predict considerable ambiguity in the action, but sizeable impacts among service members for whom education benefits transfer is far less ambiguous.
Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from a Statewide Community College System Research The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in Spring 2020. Using a difference-in-differences framework that leverages within-course variation on whether students started their Spring 2020 courses in person or online, we estimate the impact of this shift on the academic performance of Virginia’s community college students. We find that the shift to virtual instruction resulted in a 6.7 percentage point decrease in course completion, driven by increases in both course withdrawal and failure. Faculty experience teaching a course online did not mitigate the negative effects of moving to virtual instruction.