Germany's 2015 Introductory German Language Course (Einstiegskurs) — A Cautionary Case: 230,000 Refugees Trained, No Employment Effect

In late 2015 Germany's Federal Employment Agency rapidly built the Introductory German Language Course (Einstiegskurs zur Deutschförderung) for refugees from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Eritrea. About 230,000 refugees, around 38% of the 2015 arrival cohort, took it. It offered 320 hours, with no standard curriculum and no certificate.
Researchers from the Immigration Policy Lab and the IAB used a regression discontinuity around the 31 December 2015 eligibility cut-off and found no statistically significant effect on employment at 7, 12, 17 or 22 months after arrival, for any schooling level, gender or state. By contrast, the older BAMF Integration Course (up to 600 hours, final exam and certificate) raised employment: 4.4 percentage points higher one year after the six-month course started, peaking around 18 months, though it served far fewer refugees.
This is a cautionary case: speed and scale did not deliver results without intensity, curriculum and certification. The authors cannot isolate which feature mattered, and the study covers refugees aged 18-35 from four countries.

Read the full analysis: https://immigrationlab.org/content/uploads/2024/11/Germany-Ad-Hoc-Language-Program-Research-Brief.pdf