Teacher licensure status and student achievement: Lessons from private schools

Data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey of 1988 (NELS:88) were used to investigate the effect of teacher licensure status on private school students’ 12th grade math and science test scores. This data includes schooling and family background information on students that can be linked to employment information on teachers. We find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, private school students of fully certified 12th grade math and science teachers do not appear to outperform students of private school teachers who are not fully certified.     

Tuition fees and the demand for university places

Estimating the effect of tuition fee increases on demand for a university education is complicated by the potential endogeneity of tuition fees. The relative homogeneity of university tuition fees within Canadian provinces and the role of provincial governments in university funding and policies, provides an opportunity to use changes in the political party in power to identify plausibly exogenous changes in tuition fees. System estimates that take into account endogeneity of fees show large effects relative to single equation estimates, and to previous Canadian studies – a C$1000 increase in university tuition fees is estimated to reduce the enrolment rate by between 2.5 and 5 percentage points.     

Do in-state tuition benefits affect the enrollment of non-citizens? Evidence from universities in Texas

In 2001, the Texas state legislature passed House Bill 1403. With the passage of the law, Texas became the first state to offer in-state tuition rates at public universities for non-citizens (including illegal immigrants) who attended high school in the state for three years. As a result of the policy change, the cost of attending college at public universities in Texas fell dramatically for non-citizens. Using administrative data from five universities in Texas, we employ a quasi-experimental design to identify the effects of the policy change on the probability of enrollment at each of the universities. The results demonstrate a large and significant positive effect of lowering tuition on the enrollment of non-citizens at the University of Texas at Pan American and the University of Texas at San Antonio.     

Public investment and the goal of providing universal access to primary education by 2015 in Kenya

The authors use population census data to project school enrolment for Kenya. They also employ current education sector budget and national revenue base statistics to model the sector budget and to forecast the revenue base growth required to sustain universal primary education (UPE). The 2003 fiscal year unit cost of education is used as the base value for computing the budget needed to fund UPE through 2015, the year by which the international community aims to achieve UPE. The authors apply econometric analysis in exploring the policy implications for the education sector budget and capacity for revenue generation that would support the budgetary growth needed.     

Family background, school enrollments and wastage: evidence from Arab countries

Applying single and recursive bivariate probit models that utilize micro data sets of five countries, this paper examines the concatenation between school enrollments and family background. The empirical analysis captures considerable variations in the pattern of school enrollments and school wastage according to rural–urban locations and family background variables. Income gaps are powerful and interact with gender gap to produce differential school enrollment and wastage patterns. Access to credit partially redresses the adverse effects on school enrollments of negative household economic shocks. The findings call for more concerted government efforts to increase school enrollments and retention and to improve rural education particularly for females and the underprivileged.     

Free education and social inequality in Ugandan primary schools: A step backward or a step in the right direction?

The intent of this study is to understand both direct and indirect resource effects in the context of a mass education system in Uganda. We find that under certain conditions, policies that promote physical resource availability can lead to substantial equity gains. A school's social composition appears to improve educational quality but it is also related to wider gaps between rich and poor students. We also show that heavier teaching workloads have the most damaging effect on low-income students who have fewer private resources to devote to academic pursuits. The policy implication is that equalising access to formal primary education does not guarantee equitable outcomes.     

Degree flexibility and university drop-out: The Italian experience

How to reduce university drop-out is a topic of increasing concern. Although several measures have been the subject of numerous debates, little attention has been given to those impacting on the duration, structure and content of the supply of university education. This paper looks at the Italian experience to see what can be learnt about the effectiveness of these measures. In 2001, the Italian university system embarked on a process of reform that introduced greater flexibility in the degree programme structure along with a wider range of services offered to students. Employing a decomposition analysis, we find that this reform is associated with changes in student behaviour leading to a decline in drop-out risk.     

The rational adolescent: Discipline policies, lawsuits, and skill acquisition

The paper estimates the response of student truancy and long-run labor market outcomes to discipline policies in middle and secondary school. Simultaneous determination of student behaviors and school policies motivates an instrumental variables strategy. Because judicial climate influences administrators’ fear of discipline-related lawsuits, measures of judicial–legal climate at the state-level court are used as instruments for local discipline policies. Results indicate that the state-level judicial–legal climate does appear to influence administrators’ discipline policies; that students appear to be truant less often when discipline is stricter; and that school and long-run labor participation outcomes appear higher for students from schools with stricter discipline policies.     

Family background, financial constraints and higher education attendance in China

Using data from the 2004 China College Student Survey, conducted by the author, this paper finds that long-term factors such as scholastic ability and parental education are significantly correlated with higher education attendance. By contrast, short-term financial constraints are also significantly associated with higher education access, but to a lesser degree. Furthermore, in recent years China's higher education expansion has provided broader access to students from lower income families. However, the tuition fees and “net prices” of elite universities are lower than those of medium quality universities, while the tuition fees and “net prices” of medium quality universities are lower than those of relatively low quality universities and colleges. This has led to a reverse relationship between family income and attendance costs, such that lower income families now shoulder a much higher burden for their childrens’ university education than higher income families.     

Free-education in Sri Lanka. Does it eliminate the family effect?

Using the human capital theory we modelled and estimated the school enrolment and the length of schooling decisions of Sri Lankans. Our results show a very clear positive association between family background and the education decision. Children of affluent families seem to derive more benefits from the free education policy. In particular, mother's education and parents' income have a strong effect on the education decision.     

Is identification with school the key component in the ‘Black Box’ of education outcomes? Evidence from a randomized experiment

In this paper, we follow up the important class size reduction randomized experiment in Tennessee in the mid 1980s (Project STAR) to attempt to further understand the long-lasting influences of early education interventions. While STAR led to large test score benefits during the intervention, these benefits quickly faded at its conclusion. However, research has recently shown that the STAR experiment led to long term benefits, including increases in college entrance exams participation (ACT/SAT), especially for minority students. We collect new follow up data on high school participation in extracurricular activities to examine whether (1) STAR increased participation in high school activities and (2) whether this increase in participation in high school is the explanation behind the long term benefits of the intervention. We find suggestive evidence that STAR did indeed increase some aspects of high school participation, including scholastic honors and participation in sports, especially for minority students. In contrast, we find little evidence that this increase in participation is the mechanism that has conferred higher rates of college-going to the STAR students.     

Education and poverty in rural China

We analyze household and school survey data from poor counties in six Chinese provinces to examine the effects of poverty, intra-household decision-making, and school quality on educational investments (enrollment decisions) and learning outcomes (test scores and grade promotion). Unlike previous studies, we use direct measures of credit limits and women's empowerment. Drawing a distinction between the effects of wealth (measured by expenditures per capita) and credit constraints, we find that the former improves learning while the latter reduces educational investments. We find evidence of a story of gender bias in which academically weak girls are more likely to drop out in primary school while most boys continue on to junior secondary school. Women's empowerment reduces the likelihood of dropping out but does not affect other outcomes. Finally, our measures of school quality have some effect on the duration of primary school enrollment but not on learning.     

Aspiration levels and educational choices: An experimental study

The explanation of social inequalities in education is still a debated issue in economics. Recent empirical studies tend to downplay the potential role of credit constraint. This article tests a different potential explanation of social inequalities in education, specifically that social differences in aspiration level result in different educational choices. Having existed for a long time in the sociology of education, this explanation can be justified if aspiration levels are seen as reference points in a prospect theory framework. In order to test this explanation, this article applies the method of experimental economics to the issue of education choice and behaviour. One hundred and twenty-nine individuals participated in an experiment in which they had to perform a task over 15 stages grouped in three blocks or levels. In order to continue through the experiment, a minimum level of success was required at the end of each level. Rewards were dependent on the final level successfully reached. At the end of each level, participants could either choose to stop and take their reward or to pay a cost to continue further in order to possibly receive higher rewards. To test the impact of aspiration levels, outcomes were either presented as gains or losses relative to an initial sum. In accordance with the theoretical predictions, participants in the loss framing group choose to go further in the experiment. There was also a significant and interesting gender effect in the loss framing treatment, such that males performed better and reached higher levels.     

Where the boys aren't: non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education

Nearly 60 percent of college students today are women. Using longitudinal data on a nationally representative cohort of eighth grade students in 1988, I examine two potential explanations for the differential attendance rates of men and women—returns to schooling and non-cognitive skills. The attendance gap is roughly five percentage points for all high school graduates. Conditional on attendance, however, there are few differences in type of college, enrollment status or selectivity of institution. The majority of the attendance gap can be explained by differences in the characteristics of men and women, despite some gender differences in the determinants of college attendance. I find that higher non-cognitive skills and college premiums among women account for nearly 90 percent of the gender gap in higher education. Interestingly, non-cognitive factors continue to influence college enrollment after controlling for high school achievement.     

Endowment spending rates, intergenerational equity and the sources of capital gains

This paper analyzes how James Tobin’s widely cited concept of “intergenerational equity” for university endowments relates to the economic concepts of intertemporal substitutability and risk aversion. I show that Tobin’s concept of intergenerational equity is a very special case of intertemporal substitutability; a special case that implies very low tolerance for risk. Using the more general case, I show that the observed reduction in university spending rates during the 1990s can be viewed as a reasonable response to a period of non-recurring capital gains.