Finally, special thanks go to Pat Furr for providing computers for the study and for her extensive There is no clear theoretical prediction regarding whether home computers are an important input in the educational production function. To investigate the hypothesis that access to a home computer affects educational outcomes, we conduct the first-ever field experiment involving the provision of free computers to students. Financial aid students attending a large community college in Northern California were randomly selected to receive free computers and were followed for two years. Evidence suggests that the randomly selected treatment group achieved better educational outcomes than the control group that did not receive free computers. Minority students and students living farther from campus appear to have benefitted the most from the free computers. Home computers also appear to improve students ’ computer skills and use of computers at non-traditional times. The estimated effects of home computers from the experiment, however, are modest and are smaller than the positive estimates reported in previous studies. Using matched CPS data, we find estimates of educational effects that are considerably larger than the experimental estimates suggesting that non-experimental estimates of the effects
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Fairlie et al. (2011) studied this question.