Fostering non-cognitive skills and academic performance: Experimental evidence from women’s-only colleges in Pakistan

We conduct a randomized control trial to investigate the effect of a soft-skills intervention that highlights the role of beliefs about perseverance on non-cognitive skills, effort, and academic performance of college students. We have a sample of 366 undergraduate students from women-only and public colleges in a major metropolitan city in Pakistan. We find that a brief discussion stressing perseverance and a constructive interpretation of failures led to increased level of grit among treated students one year after the intervention. However, we find no significant increase in hours of study and college attendance after one year or test scores two and nine months after the intervention. Our findings suggest that soft-touch interventions may impact non-cognitive skills, but they can be insufficient for improving academic achievement.