The role of peers and grades in determining major persistence in the sciences

Using longitudinal administrative data from a large elite research university, this paper analyzes the role of peers and grades in determining major persistence in the life and physical sciences. In the physical sciences, analyses using within-course, across-time variation show that ex-ante measures of peer quality in a student's introductory courses has a lasting impact on the probability of persisting in the major. This peer effect exhibits important non-linearities such that weak students benefit from exposure to stronger peers while strong students are not dragged down by weaker peers. In both the physical and the life sciences, I find evidence that students are “pulled away” by their high grades in non-science courses and “pushed out” by their low grades in their major field. In the physical sciences, females are found to be more responsive to grades than males, consistent with psychological theories of stereotype vulnerability.     

Bullying,education and earnings: Evidence from the National Child Development Study

We explore the effect of bullying at school on the educational attainment of a sample of individuals drawn from the British National Child Development Study (NCDS). Our empirical findings suggest that school bullying has an adverse effect on human capital accumulation both at and beyond school. Moreover; the impact of bullying on educational attainment at age 16 is found to be similar in magnitude to class size effects. Furthermore, in contrast to class size effects, the adverse influence of bullying on educational attainment remains during adulthood. In addition, being bullied at school influences wages received during adulthood as well as indirectly influencing wages via educational attainment.     

Measuring the earnings returns to lifelong learning in the UK

This paper examines the earnings returns to learning that takes place following the conventional ‘school-to-work’ stage of the life-course. We operationalise such ‘lifelong learning’ as the attainment of certified qualifications in adulthood, following the completion of the first period of continuous full-time education. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period 1991–2006, our approach and findings represent an important addition to the existing evidence base. By using annual data, we are able to employ the fixed effects estimator, which eliminates the problem of time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. Our dynamic specification uses a lag structure to consider how earnings returns evolve in the medium and longer run, whilst also controlling for wage trends which were evident prior to qualification attainment. Our results show a medium-run return for women of 10% on hourly wages. For men, initial suggestions of a similar positive return are eliminated once pre-qualification trends are taken into account. This suggests that adult learning has a causal effect on women's subsequent earnings but, for men, any apparent gain is due to selection.     

Management by results: Student evaluation of faculty teaching and the mis-measurement of performance

Using data on 4 years of courses at American University, regression results show that actual grades have a significant, positive effect on student evaluations of teaching (SETs), controlling for expected grade and fixed effects for both faculty and courses, and for possible endogeneity. Implications are that the SET is a faulty measure of teaching quality and grades a faulty signal of future job performance. Students, faculty, and provost appear to be engaged in an individually rational but socially destructive game of grade inflation centered on the link between SETs and grades. When performance is hard to measure, pay-for-performance, embodied by the link between SETs and faculty pay, may have unintended adverse consequences.     

Unequal education,poverty and low growth—A theoretical framework for rural education of China

This paper constructs an intertemporal substitution educational model based on endogenous growth theory and examines the rural education, farmer income and rural economic growth problems in China. It shows that the households originally with the same economic endowment but different education endowment take different growth routes, the income difference between low- and high-income families can be enlarged as they take different educational growth routes, and the low-income family has the chance to get into the “poverty trap”. In the mean time, urban and rural, developed and underdeveloped rural areas, as they take the different education growth routes the difference of economic growth tend to be expanded for the flow of high-quality labor and different industrialization, and they also have the risk of “poverty trap”. The key to solve this problem is the active public policies that promote the equal education, rational income and equilibrium development.     

Math skills and labor-market outcomes: Evidence from a resume-based field experiment

We examine the link between math skills and labor-market outcomes using a resume-based field experiment. Specifically, we send fictitious resumes in response to online job postings, randomly assigning some resumes to indicate stronger math skills, and measure employer responses. The resumes that are randomly assigned to indicate stronger math skills receive more interest from employers than the comparison resumes. Our findings add to the body of evidence showing that stronger math skills positively affect labor-market outcomes.     

Aggregate unemployment decreases individual returns to education

Aggregate unemployment may affect individual returns to education through qualification-specific responses in participation and wage bargaining. This paper shows that an increase in regional unemployment by 1% decreases returns to education by 0.005 percentage points. This implies that higher skilled employees are better sheltered from labour market changes with respect to their jobs but they encounter larger wage changes than less skilled employees. We use representative individual data and panel variation in unemployment between German regions and employee groups. We demonstrate that our results are robust with respect to aggregation bias, time lags and potential endogeneity of the unemployment variable.     

Overskilling dynamics and education pathways

This paper uses panel data and econometric methods to estimate the incidence and the dynamic properties of overskilling among employed individuals. The paper begins by asking whether there is extensive overskilling in the labour market, and whether overskilling differs by education pathway. The answer to both questions is yes. The paper continues by asking whether overskilling is a self-perpetuating labour market state (state dependence), and whether state dependence differs by education pathway. Overskilled workers with a higher degree show the highest state dependence, while workers with vocational education show none. Workers with no post-school qualifications are somewhere between these two groups. The finding that higher degree graduates suffer the greatest overskilling state dependence, combined with the well-established finding that they also suffer the highest overskilling wage penalty, suggests that the cost of mismatch among this grouping are greater relative to vocationally qualified workers.     

Human capital augmentation versus the signaling value of MBA education

Panel data on MBA graduates is used in an attempt to empirically distinguish between human capital and signaling models of education. The existence of employment observations prior to MBA enrollment allows for the control of unobserved ability or selection into MBA programs (through the use of individual fixed effects). In addition, variation in the amount of pre-MBA work experience allows for a test to distinguish between the models. In particular, a predominant signaling view is shown to predict smaller returns to the degree, the more pre-MBA work experience one has (controlling for total experience). Additionally, a unique feature of the data is that respondents were asked to report skills or abilities gained through their schooling, allowing us to determine the extent to which these purported skills are valued in the labor market. The combined evidence suggests that while human capital accumulation may contribute to the returns to an MBA, the majority of the returns is derived from the signaling/screening function of the degree.     

Do bans on affirmative action hurt minority students? Evidence from the Texas Top 10% Plan

In light of the recent bans on affirmative action in higher education, this paper provides new evidence on the effects of alternative admissions policies on the persistence and college completion of minority students. I find that the change from affirmative action to the Top 10% Plan in Texas decreased both retention and graduation rates of lower-ranked minority students. Results show that both fall-to-fall freshmen retention and six-year college graduation of second-decile minority students decreased, respectively, by 2.4 and 3.3 percentage points. The effect of the change in admissions policy was slightly larger for minority students in the third and lower deciles: fall-to-fall freshmen retention and six-year college graduation decreased, respectively, by 4.9 and 4.2 percentage points. Moreover, I find no evidence in support of the minority “mismatch” hypothesis. These results suggest that most of the increase in the graduation gap between minorities and non-minorities in Texas, a staggering 90%, was driven by the elimination of affirmative action in the 1990s.     

Three measures of returns to education: An illustration for the case of Spain

In this article, in a context of wage equations with sample selection, we propose a novel interpretation of the partial effects linked to education as additional measures of returns to education that complement the traditional one, which is directly obtained from the estimation of the wage offer equation. Using European Household Panel data for Spain these partial effects were calculated. The results show that there are incentives in Spain for investing in education not only because it means an increase in wages but also because it raises the probability of obtaining any wage at all.     

Estimating teacher effectiveness from two-year changes in students’ test scores

Using a dataset covering over 10,000 Australian school teachers and over 90,000 pupils, I estimate how effective teachers are in raising students’ test scores. Since the exams are biennial, it is necessary to take account of the teacher's work in the intervening year. Even adjusting for measurement error, the teacher fixed effects are widely dispersed, and there is a strong positive correlation between a teacher's gains in literacy and numeracy. Teacher fixed effects show a significant association with some, though not all, observable teacher characteristics. Experience has the strongest impact, particularly in the early years of a teacher's career. Female teachers do better at teaching literacy. Teachers with a master's degree or some other form of further qualification do not appear to achieve significantly larger test score gains. Overall, teacher characteristics found in the departmental payroll database explain only a small fraction of the variance in teacher performance.     

Do course evaluations truly reflect student learning? Evidence from an objectively graded post-test

It is difficult to assess the extent to which course evaluations reflect how much students truly learn from a course because valid measures of learning are rarely available. This paper makes use of a unique setting in which students take a common, high-stakes post-test which is centrally graded and serves as the basis for capturing actual student learning. We match these student-specific measures of learning to student-specific course evaluation scores from electronic records and a rich set of student-level covariates, including a pre-test score and other measures of skills prior to entering the course. While small in magnitude, we find a robust positive, and statistically significant, association between our measure of student learning and course evaluations.     

On reconstructing school segregation: The efficacy and equity of single-sex schooling

A change to Title IX has spurred new single-sex public schooling in the US. Until recently, nearly all gender-segregated schools were private, and comprehensive data for public school comparisons are not yet available. To investigate the effects of single-sex education, I focus on within private sector comparisons, and additionally address selection bias using an index comparing expectations to outcomes and quantile regressions. Compared to graduates from private coed schools, girls’ school alumnae are no more likely to pursue college degrees, and both genders are less likely to meet their own educational expectations. However, single-sex schooling may support gender equity, as single-sex schools yield the least segregated college major choices. On the other hand, higher mean starting salaries among single-sex school graduates do not persistent in regression results. Much of the benefit from single-sex schooling accrues to students already likely to succeed, but selection bias does not explain all gains. There are some benefits for African-American men and low income students.     

Applying early decision: Student and college incentives and outcomes

Colleges’ early decision (ED) admission policies require accepted students to commit to attend the school without comparing outside options. With data from two liberal arts schools we find evidence that students with higher willingness and ability to pay and lower measured ability levels are more likely to apply ED. Applying ED raises the probability of acceptance by 40 percentage points. We address the potential selection of students into ED, including estimating an upper bound of 46 percentage points following Altonji, Elder, and Taber (2005). One college appears to use the ED process to screen applicants with high SAT scores and female applicants, thereby avoiding the potential adverse selection of applicants in the regular decision process. Finally, even conditional on higher socioeconomic status and other observable characteristics, applying ED is correlated with higher financial aid packages, perhaps because the college's financial aid resources are higher earlier in the admission process.     

The redistributive equity of affirmative action: Exploring the role of race,socioeconomic status,and gender in college admissions

This paper contributes to research on affirmative action by examining issues of equity in the context of racial quotas in Brazil. We study the experience of the University of Brasilia, which established racial quotas in 2004 reserving 20% of available admissions slots for students who self-identified as black. Based on university admissions data and a student survey conducted by the authors, we find evidence that race, socioeconomic status, and gender were considerable barriers to college attendance and achievement. For example, first-difference regressions involving pairs of siblings indicate that black identity and gender had a negative effect on entrance exam scores. Moreover, we compare displaced and displacing applicants and find that racial quotas helped promote equity to some extent. Nevertheless, the scale and scope of redistribution were highly limited, and the vast majority of Brazilians had little chance of attending college, suggesting that more still needs to be done.     

Family background,self-confidence and economic outcomes

In this paper we analyze the role played by self-confidence, modeled as beliefs about one's ability, in shaping task choices. We propose a model in which fully rational agents exploit all the available information to update their beliefs using Bayes’ rule, eventually learning their true type. We show that when the learning process does not converge quickly to the true ability level, small differences in initial confidence can result in diverging patterns of human capital accumulation between otherwise identical individuals. If differences in self-confidence are correlated with socio-economic background (as a large body of empirical literature suggests), self-confidence can be a channel through which education and earning inequalities perpetuate across generations. Our theory suggests that cognitive tests should take place as early as possible, in order to avoid that systematic differences in self-confidence among equally talented people lead to the emergence of gaps in the accumulation of human capital.     

The cost structure of higher education in further education colleges in England

This paper examines the cost of the increased provision of higher education courses within further education colleges in England. We believe this to be the first attempt to fit a cost function specifically to the further education sector. Cost functions for a sample of 96 colleges over a 2-year period, from 2000 to 2002, are fitted using a panel data methodology as well as stochastic frontier analysis. We compare and contrast our findings with a sample of 959 US colleges. Our findings indicate that most further education colleges are able to benefit from economies of scale. Results from both methodologies suggest the presence of product-specific economies of scale, substantial ray economies of scale and indicate that higher education classroom-based courses, such as business studies, as well as vocational courses display substantial economies of scope.