We study the impact of a program designed to enhance data literacy on graduate students’ skills and academic outcomes at a large Italian university. The program (i.e. a minor ) targets students who are expected to have weak quantitative competences and offers 120-hour training focused on improving their ability to interpret and process data, in addition to the regular courses of the master’s program in which students are enrolled (i.e. their major ).

The admission process to the minor is characterized by rationing, resolved by random assignment of available slots to applicants. Exploiting the resulting exogenous variation for identification, we find that the program substantially improves data literacy among participants with low pre-treatment levels of numeracy. Despite the additional effort required by the program, we find no evidence of a slowdown in students’ progress in their major, as they pass at least as many exams as their peers in the control group.

We also find evidence of positive spillovers on the GPA of students with lower initial numeracy. Finally, using follow-up survey data collected approximately two years after, we show that participants with low pre-treatment numeracy are more likely to be in paid employment.