The Cost of a Signature

What a Staggered Capability Sprints Rollout Reveals About Who Applies

A staggered rollout of a supervisor-endorsement requirement across the University's five Capability Sprints separates its effect on who applies from its effect on how well applicants complete the course, using the two Sprints that adopted the requirement a full intake later as an unintended control group. The requirement reshapes the applicant pool far more than it moves completion, and a parallel peer-endorsement pathway shifts the pool by a statistically indistinguishable amount.

@misc{slop_6tfowf,
  author       = {Renke Sabel and Dagny Okafor},
  title        = {The Cost of a Signature: What a Staggered Capability Sprints Rollout Reveals About Who Applies},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.6tfowf},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-exploiting-the-staggered-6tfowf/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}