Returns to education in rural China

Based on one of the most widely used datasets by foreign-based sociologists, this paper examines the rate of returns to education in rural China. Compared with the previous studies that showed rather low rates in rural areas throughout the 1980s, this study finds a considerably higher rate in 1996. A chief contributor is the rapid non-agricultural development, which creates enormous upward mobility opportunities, particularly for the more educated. Due to the uneven economic development nationwide, the rate of returns to education varies widely across regions. In areas with less developed non-agricultural sectors, it remains low. In contrast, where off-farm employment is widespread, it is much higher. In addition, the labor market is functioning to allocate the more educated to better-paid jobs, but has yet to produce higher returns to education in non-agricultural sectors than in the agricultural sector. However, changes may be occurring in coastal regions. Translated from Zhongguo Shehui Kexue 中国社会科学 (Social Sciences in China), 2006, (3): 98–109     

Disability and returns to education in a developing country

In this paper, we estimate wage returns to investment in education for persons with disabilities in Nepal, using information on the timing of being impaired during school-age years as identifying instrumental variables for years of schooling. We employ unique data collected from persons with hearing, physical, and visual impairments as well as nationally representative survey data from the Nepal Living Standard Survey 2003/2004 (NLSS II). After controlling for endogeneity bias arising from schooling decisions as well as sample selection bias due to endogenous labor participation, the estimated rate of returns to education is very high among persons with disabilities, ranging from 19.3 to 25.6%. The coexistence of these high returns to education and limited years of schooling suggest that supply side constraints in education to accommodate persons with disabilities and/or there are credit market imperfections. Policies to eliminate these barriers will mitigate poverty among persons with disabilities, the largest minority group in the world.     

Expansion of Chinese higher education since 1998: Its causes and outcomes

This paper examines an important development in Chinese higher education in the late 1990s and early 2000s, namely, its radical expansion of enrollment starting from 1998. After a brief review of the related literature on educational expansion, the paper analyzes the higher education expansion in China in detail. The paper argues that a variety of factors have led to the enrollment expansion, including the expectation to stimulate domestic consumption and to ease the immediate pressure on the labor market, the high public interest in and demand for higher education in Chinese society, and the political will of the Chinese government to develop higher education. The outcomes of the enrollment expansion are also examined. The paper argues that the expected short term impact of enrollment expansion on Chinese economy is not warranted by reality. Enrollment expansion has also put pressures on Chinese higher education to further reform its structure, curricula, and administration. More importantly, enrollment expansion has brought the issue of equity to the front.     

The economic returns to field of study and competencies among higher education graduates in Ireland

This paper looks at the economic returns to different fields of study in Ireland in 2004 and also the value placed on various job-related competencies, accumulated on completion of higher education, in the Irish labour market. In examining these issues, the paper also analyses, through quantile regression, how the returns vary across the earnings distribution. The impact that education-job mismatch, both education level and field, has on earnings is also taken into consideration. The results derived indicate that, relative to the base case, there are higher returns to Medicine & Veterinary, Education, Engineering & Architecture, Science and Computers & IT. Small but significant returns were found for some of the competencies analysed, in particular technical skills. The quantile regression analysis reveals that both field and competency returns vary across the wage distribution and that, apart from Medicine & Veterinary and technical skills, field and competency-specific returns diminish as one moves up the earnings distribution.     

The productivity of education and the premium for foreign degrees in LDC's

This article serves a twofold purpose. First, it provides further empirical evidence of the higher premiums for foreign degrees in LDC's: in this particular case, Malaysia. Second, it shows that the returns to higher education and the premiums for foreign degrees can be attributed principally to their superior productivity rather than the irrational behavior of employers.     

Why Brazil fell behind in college education?

Brazil fell behind in higher education attainment for the cohorts born in the 1950s and 1960s. We jointly model educational choices, labor force participation and wages, and compute the average, marginal and internal rate of returns to schooling after controlling for changes in ability composition at all levels of education. We find very high returns to college, which indicate that the disappointing trend in higher education could reflect binding credit constraints, psychic costs or uncertainty about future earnings gains from schooling.     

Educational returns beyond the mean: Differences along wage distributions of men and women in India's formal labor market

Unlike previous studies on educational returns in developing countries, this paper examines the distributional impacts of education on wages using a recently developed econometric approach – unconditional quantile regressions. The results yield unconditional impacts of education at different points of the wage distribution and, therefore, are more informative from a policy perspective than both traditional regression and quantile regression methods commonly used for estimating educational returns. We use a nationally representative dataset on labor markets in India, collected in 2005–2006. The results reveal significant heterogeneity in education's effects along the wage distribution and striking differences in these patterns by gender: the effect of primary education is found to be significantly higher for women than men in the middle of the wage distribution; while the effect of post primary education exhibits a distinct pattern whereby women get significantly higher rewards than men above the median and significantly lower rewards than men below the median. These findings have direct implications for the targeting of education policies that seek to reduce gender wage inequality.     

Expansion,differentiation, and the persistence of social class inequalities in British higher education

Conventional political wisdom has it that educational expansion helps to reduce socioeconomic inequalities of access to education by increasing equality of educational opportunity. The counterarguments of Maximally Maintained Inequality (MMI) and Effectively Maintained Inequality (EMI), in contrast, contend that educational inequalities tend to persist despite expansion because those from more advantaged social class backgrounds are better placed to take up the new educational opportunities that expansion affords (MMI) and to secure for themselves qualitatively better kinds of education at any given level (EMI). This paper sets out to test the predictions of the MMI and EMI hypotheses against empirical data for the case of Britain where higher education expanded dramatically during the 1960s and again during the early 1990s. The results show that quantitative inequalities between social classes in the odds of higher education enrolment proved remarkably persistent for much of the period between 1960 and 1995, and began to decline only during the early 1990s, after the enrolment rate for the most advantaged social class had reached saturation point. Throughout this same 35 year period, qualitative inequalities between social classes in the odds of enrolment on more traditional and higher status degree programmes and at ‘Old’ universities remained fundamentally unchanged. In short, social class inequalities in British higher education have been both maximally and effectively maintained.     

Does the expansion of higher education reduce gender gaps in the labor market? Evidence from a natural experiment

In 2005 Chilean congress approved a bill that established a new funding tool for higher education funding through a "private system" of student loans (named CAE). The system aimed to support higher education inclusion among students with academic merits overcoming the lack of resources for ensuring access. Politicians have referred to this reform in higher education funding as a critical factor for expanding higher education enrollment. By its immediate results, it is a great strategy to cope with inequality and social mobility issues. However, there is little empirical evidence about labor market variables' overall effects, such as gender discrimination. This work attempts to estimate the new instrument's impact on the three standard measures of gender labor discrimination: labor participation, the gender wage gap, and the glass ceiling. The empirical strategy uses a difference-in-difference approach to provide estimates. The results indicate that the CAE policy changed women's labor market participation and contributed to close the gender pay gap in the labor market. However, the glass ceiling increased in the entire labor market, but not in the white-collar job market in specific.     

教育对不同群体收入的影响

This study investigates, statistically and econometrically, the income level, income inequality, education inequality, and the relationship between education and income of different social groups, on the basis of the Chinese Urban Household Survey conducted in 2005, the Gini coefficient and the quartile regression method. Research findings indicate that income inequality in China shows a significantly increasing trend since the beginning of the 1990s, which is attributed to the lowest income groups. Additionally, it is seen that the higher the level of education in a group, the smaller the income gap within it. As a result, the rate of returns on education for the “group with weaker ability to earn” is higher than that for the “group with stronger ability to earn”. Translated from Beijing Daxue Jiaoyu Pinglun 北京大学教育评论 (Peking University Education Review), 2006, 4(2): 85–92     

Changes in returns to education in India, 1983–94: by gender, age-cohort and location

There is hardly any estimate of the monetary returns to schooling in the labor market in India based on national level representative data for the recent period. This paper provides estimates of the returns to education in wage employment in India by gender, age cohort and location (rural–urban) for the most recent period 1993/4, and also evaluates the changes in returns over a period of time from 1983–94 using data from a large national level household survey. The estimates show that the returns to education increase up to the secondary level and decline thereafter. There is evidence of substantial gender and rural–urban differences in the returns to schooling. Investment in women's education, particularly at the middle, lower secondary and higher secondary levels, is more profitable than that for men in 1983 and also in 1993/4. The returns to women's primary and middle levels of education have declined while those to secondary and college levels have increased during the decade 1983–94.     

Public spending on higher education in developing countries: Too much or too little?

This paper discusses problems with the prevalent view that public resources for education in developing countries should be reallocated from higher to lower levels of education. There may be a case for maintaining and even increasing spending on higher education, as long as public funds can be directed to research and other “public good” functions of institutions of higher education. Current measures of social returns to primary, secondary and higher education do not reflect unmeasured social benefits at each level; since we do not know the relative size of these benefits across levels, we do not know the true ranking of social returns across primary, secondary and higher education. The true social rate of return to certain components of higher education, such as research and postgraduate training in science and technology, and creation of other skills where social returns probably exceed private returns (such as public administration) is probably high, and in some settings, may now be as high or higher than the social rate of return to primary and secondary education. Moreover, achieving and sustaining adequate levels of quality to capture these social returns requires minimal stability in public financing, arguing against major reallocations away from higher education. But this does not argue for more public spending on all higher education programs. On the contrary; within the envelope of total public spending on higher education, reallocation away from public spending on undergraduate training makes sense, since such training probably has low social compared to private returns, and can be accomplished by greater reliance on private universities and by increasing tuition and other fees in public universities, while ensuring equitable access through loan and scholarship programs.     

Wage determinants among medical doctors and nurses in Spain

This paper examines the determination of wage rates for health professionals using three well known, and commonly used, econometric techniques: ordinary least squares, instrumental variables, and Heckman’s method. The data come from a graduate survey and the analysis focuses on a regional labor market, due to nationwide information on salaries is absent in Spain. After estimating different wage equations, the results suggest that OLS estimates are preferable. The findings show an important wage premium for medical doctors relative to nurses, but also a wage advantage for workers who are civil servants and a gender wage-gap that favors men. Although the expansion of higher education in Spain has reduced social inequalities in access, the main policy implication from this paper is that social class differences can still persist at the degree level—in the choice of degree—if students of higher socioeconomic status get a place at university in a degree of higher earnings, a fact that is corroborated in this study.     

Earnings expectation and graduate employment: Evidence from recent Chinese college graduates

Chinese college graduates have faced increasing labor market competition since the expansion of tertiary education. Given rigid market demand, graduates with realistic earnings expectations may experience a more efficient job search. Using the 2008 MYCOS College Graduate Employment Survey, this study finds that a 1 000 yuan reduction in a graduate’s reservation wage can significantly increase the probability of finding a job by 66% and increase the likelihood of being employed six months after graduation by 92%. In addition, the gap between the reservation wage and the market wage has a positive impact. By slightly adjusting earnings expectations, college graduates can significantly improve job search efficiency. Market wages should be seen as reference points when adjusting income expectations.     

Who Benefits Most from a University Degree?: A Cross-National Comparison of Selection and Wage Returns in the US,UK, and Germany

Recent research on economic returns to higher education in the United States suggests that those with the highest wage returns to a college degree are least likely to obtain one. We extend the study of heterogeneous returns to tertiary education across multiple institutional contexts, investigating how the relationship between wage returns and the propensity to complete a degree varies by the level of expansion, differentiation, and cost of higher education. Drawing on panel data and matching techniques, we compare findings from the US with selection into degree completion in Germany and the UK. Contrary to previous studies, we find little evidence for population level heterogeneity in economic returns to higher education.     

Returns to education and economic transition: an international comparison

This paper compares the returns to education in transitional economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, Slovak Republic and the Ukraine in the 1990s, and in China in the 1980s and 1990s. In the pre‐transition period, the returns to education in the six CEE countries were low at about 2–4%, while those in China were even lower at less than 2%. As the process of transition towards a market economy evolved over time, the returns to education steadily increased, and non‐state sector workers and young workers were rewarded with higher returns to their education than their counterparts in the state sector and older age categories. The marginal returns to university education are the highest of all of the marginal returns to various education levels. Moreover, the results show that it took about a decade for the six CEE countries, and two decades for China, to raise their respective returns to education to the 10% level.     

中国高校内部效率研究——基于范围经济的研究

Among the studies of the internal efficiency in higher education, most have focused on the scale of university (the economies of scale), but little on internal operating efficiency in higher education, especially on the combined efficiency of outputs (the economies of scope). There are few theoretical discussions or experimental research on whether teaching resources are complementary with research resources, or whether resources in undergraduate cultivation are shared with those in postgraduate training. In the background of the resource scarcity, it is significant to study the economies of scope in higher education to realize intensive development of higher education. Based on the multiproduct cost function and the data of universities attached to the Ministry of Education, this paper attempts to deal with the complementarities of resources used in undergraduate cultivation, postgraduate training and research to find that universities produce these outputs without sufficient resource sharing, the diseconomies of scope in postgraduate training is highest. As far as the quality of teaching and research are concerned, diseconomies of scope of the outputs are great. The main reasons are as follows: poor distribution of facilities, teachers and books, overlapping internal management systems, and the current postgraduate cultivation model. Therefore, relative departments should take internal resource sharing in higher education into account when making the administration policy of higher education. __________ Translated from Beijing Shifan Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban) 北京师范大学学报 (社会科学 版) (Journal of Beijing Normal University (Social Sciences)), 2007, (2): 81–91     

Social changes and the revival of liberal education in China since the 1990s

China’s higher education placed exclusive emphasis on narrowly specialized education and neglected liberal education before the 1990s. However, along with the dramatic social changes since the 1990s, liberal education has revived in China. This paper first examines the characteristics of higher education in China before the 1990s, and then explores the ideas, policies, and specific measures in higher education reform since the 1990s within the larger social context, and thirdly, with a case study on the “liberal education curriculum” introduced by Peking University in 2000, it investigates the ideas, contents and characteristics of liberal education. Finally, it reveals the rationale for the liberal education revival in China.     

高等教育收益率上升新解:劳动力流动制度的视角

从劳动力流动制度的角度看,20世纪90年代以来我国高等教育收益率逐年上升的原因在于,一方面我国劳动人事制度改革增强了受高等教育者的工作努力程度,进而使高等教育的生产效应得到释放,另一方面我国劳动力市场逐渐从分割走向统一,增强了劳动力的流动性,使高等教育的配置效应得以充分发挥。     

Comparative study of faculty evaluation of teaching practice between Chinese and U.S. Institutions of higher education

Along with the “massification” of higher education in China since the late 1990s, the issue of quality and excellence appeared at the top of China’s higher education agenda. Since faculty evaluation of teaching is one of the major approaches adopted by China’s higher education sector to pursue quality and excellence, it is valuable to examine the effectiveness of faculty evaluation of teaching practices adopted by the Chinese higher education institutions (HEIs). Study of current literature reveals some similarities and differences between the faculty evaluation of teaching policies and practices between Chinese and American higher education sectors. This paper examines the specific practices adopted by some top-tier Chinese HEIs and American elite colleges and universities, summarizes and analyzes the major differences and similarities of faculty evaluation of teaching practices between these two countries’ top-tier HEIs, and discusses the applicability of the American models to the Chinese setting of higher education. Finally, a set of best practices regarding faculty evaluation of teaching are proposed for Chinese HEIs.