In recent years, the two-step approach for text classification based on pre-training plus fine-tuning has led to significant improvements in classification performance. In this paper, we study the low-budget scenario, and we ask whether it is justified to allocate the additional resources needed for fine-tuning complex models. To do so, we isolate the gains obtained from pre-training from those obtained from fine-tuning. We find out that, when the gains from pre-training are factored out, the performance attained by using complex transformer models leads to marginal improvements over simpler models. Therefore, in this scenario, utilizing simpler classifiers on top of pre-trained representations proves to be a viable alternative.

Most current state-of-the-art approaches for text classification are based on fine-tuning the representations computed by large language models (LLMs). This strategy has led to significant improvements in classification performance and contributed to a reduction of the amount of labeled data required for training a model. However, for some challenging classification tasks, providing enough annotations to ensure a reliable classification continues to be the main bottleneck. This is especially true in settings of highly imbalanced class distributions. This paper proposes to tackle this bottleneck by exploiting the structural properties of pre-trained embeddings. We develop a label propagation method that uses pre-trained embeddings to spread information from the labeled samples to nearby samples in the induced space, ensuring the optimal use of annotations. Our approach is simple and relatively low-cost since it only requires computing some distances in the embedded space. We conduct experiments on different text classification datasets showing that the proposed method is efficient and significantly outperforms both self-training and random walk label propagation strategies.

Textual representations based on pre-trained language models are key, especially in few-shot learning scenarios. What makes a representation good for text classification? Is it due to the geometric properties of the space or because it is well aligned with the task? We hypothesize the second claim. To test it, we develop a task alignment score based on hierarchical clustering that measures alignment at different levels of granularity. Our experiments on text classification validate our hypothesis by showing that task alignment can explain the classification performance of a given representation.