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on Education |
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Issue of 2011‒11‒14
thirty-one papers chosen by Joao Carlos Correia Leitao University of Beira Interior and Technical University of Lisbon |
| By: | Agata Pradela |
| Abstract: | Education for labour market on the school level is neglected in Poland. Concentration on university degree and general education caused the decrease of interest of vocational education of qualified workers (needed on labor market). To the most important problems in management in the area of vocational education belong: 1. Increasing number of lower secondary schools graduates choosing general secondary schools and willing to continue education at universities. 2. Decreasing interest of vocational education. 3. Lack of information of labour market requirements and very inefficient cooperation between labour market and educational system. 4. Graduates knowledge, qualifications, skills and attitudes does meet labour market needs. To solve these problems the Author suggests to create the cluster initiative in educational system (as a part of research of the project “Creation the cluster initiatives in education systemâ€Â; caring out in Silesian University of Technology; financed by Ministry of Science and Higher Education; no 0193/B/H03/2010/39). The paper presents good practices in vocational education to implement in the initiative and a map of categories of solution. Research also indicated barriers and abilities of the implementation those solutions (or elements of them). The proposal to adapt the education to labour market requirements is based on integrated research and monitoring on cluster initiative’s participants. They are: pupils, educational area (mainly: schools directors and teachers), employers and local governments. The paper also highlights the model of cluster initiative in education. Research helped to indicate areas of the best climate to create cluster initiative, barriers and difficulties, ways of communication, range of corporation in the initiative. Indicated operations, processes and role of participants in cluster initiative will help to create the expert system to support educational management in conjunction with labour market needs. The idea of expert system is to activate communication between potential participant in cluster initiative. Making decisions on the basis of scientific research will make them rational. A tool used by every participant will help to create cluster initiative in education (firstly very narrow) and to support functioning of the cluster initiative. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p277&r=edu |
| By: | Böckerman, Petri; Haapanen, Mika |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of polytechnic reform on geographical mobility. A polytechnic, higher education reform took place in Finland in the 1990s. It gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics and also brought higher education to regions that did not have a university before. This expansion of higher education provides exogenous variation in the regional supply of higher education. We find that the reform increased the migration of high school graduates. The migration propensities increased particularly close to graduation from high school, but some results also suggest a smaller positive effect over a longer period. |
| Keywords: | Migration; higher education; school reform; polytechnics; high school graduates |
| JEL: | I20 J10 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2011–11–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34619&r=edu |
| By: | Corak, Miles |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the education outcomes (including the chances of being a high school drop-out) of a cohort of immigrants who arrived in Canada as children using the 2006 Census. The research documents the degree to which high school graduation for immigrant children may change discretely after a particular age at arrival in Canada. |
| Keywords: | Education, training and learning, Children and youth, Ethnic diversity and immigration, Educational attainment, Immigrant children and youth, Education, training and skills, Integration of newcomers, Outcomes of education |
| Date: | 2011–10–27 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:stc:stcp3e:2011336e&r=edu |
| By: | Robert Gold; Oliver Falck; Stephan Heblich |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we assess educational factors which might have an impact on entrepreneurship. We analyze influences on the entrepreneurial intentions of German university students and find that pre-university education significantly affects their desire to become an entrepreneur. Using the recent German history of separation and reunification as quasi-natural experiment, we focus on the early formation of entrepreneurial endowments during adolescence and investigate whether pre-university education affects university students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Particularly, we analyze the impact of socialization and schooling under the socialist regime of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) which might hamper entrepreneurship. Our results show that socialist education has a negative effect on the entrepreneurial intentions of students in reunified Germany who were brought up in the GDR. When analyzing the subsample of East German students who were partly educated in the FRG after reunification in 1990, we find that some years of education in the liberal market system increase the entrepreneurial intentions of students born in the GDR. We focus on university students, since universities are seen as potential “breeding ground†for innovative entrepreneurship as described by Schumpeter (1912). Here we assume according to Falck et al. (2009) that entrepreneurial intentions are a good predictor for future entrepreneurship. We use data from a regularly repeated survey among university students in Germany. Our analysis rests on the three waves conducted after reunification at 23 universities, in (the former socialist) East as well as in West Germany. Generally, German students have significantly lower entrepreneurial intentions when they were educated in the GDR. We further restrict our sample to mobile students at West German universities and still find a negative effect of socialist education. This effect is also robust to the inclusion of a rich set of control variables concerning the students’ family background, job experience as well as further measures for their educational training. Overall, being educated in the socialist GDR decreases the likelihood of having entrepreneurial intentions between around 4 and 7 percentage points Thus our findings suggest that adolescents’ education might act as effective measure to stimulate entrepreneurship. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p999&r=edu |
| By: | Lasse Sigbjørn Stambøl |
| Abstract: | An important motivation to establish and develop higher education institutions across regions is to improve and restructure the regional labour markets toward higher education jobs, contribute to maintain the regional settlement patterns of the population generally and to increase the numbers of higher educated labour especially. This paper introduces a short description of the Norwegian regional higher education institution system, followed by analyses of the impact of higher education institutions on regional labour markets, labour and job mobility and population development featuring e.g. studies of the students’ post graduate regional mobility and the regional ability of students to complete their graduation. Most of the analyses are based on data from individual registers covering the entire population, and partly organised as regional panel data. Tentative results suggest that regions that contain both university and high schools perform better than average on most indicators being analysed; especially, the ability to increase the number of higher educated labour, the return to the net increase of professionals at the higher education institutions on the numbers of regional higher educated labour, the ability to re-allocate jobs within firms from low to higher education jobs, higher than average net in-migration of population due to relatively low out-migration and stronger import of knowledge through in-migration than export of knowledge through out-migration, thus experiencing a strong regional “brain-gainâ€. Furthermore, the regions where the higher education institute itself represents a minor part of the local higher educated labour market, perform mostly better than those regions where the higher education institute itself represents a medium or major part of the local higher educated labour market. Finally, the regions without higher education institutes mostly perform lower than average on most indicators, except the ability to create new jobs in new established firms. However, these regions also show higher than average closures of firms generally. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p1403&r=edu |
| By: | Hjalmarsson, Randi; Holmlund, Helena; Lindquist, Matthew |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the causal effect of educational attainment on conviction and incarceration using Sweden's compulsory schooling reform as an instrument for years of schooling and a 25 percent random sample from Sweden's Multigenerational Register matched with more than 30 years of administrative crime records. The first stage of the analysis employs a differences-in-differences design to account for the non-random implementation of the reform across municipalities, and finds that exposure to the reform increased average educational attainment by 0.28 years for males and 0.16 years for females. Our 2SLS estimates indicate that more schooling has a significant negative effect on convictions and incarceration at both the extensive and intensive margins. These effects are generally seen for both males and females. Specifically, one additional year of schooling decreases the likelihood of incarceration by 16 percent for males and the likelihood of conviction by 7.5 and 11 percent for males and females, respectively. In addition, we find that the effect of education on crime persists across birth cohorts, throughout the life cycle, and across crime categories. |
| Keywords: | crime; education; school reform |
| JEL: | I2 K42 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8646&r=edu |
| By: | Findeisen, Sebastian (University of Zurich); Sachs, Dominik (University of Konstanz) |
| Abstract: | We study optimal tax and educational policies in a dynamic private information economy, in which ex-ante heterogeneous individuals make an educational investment early in their life and face a stochastic wage distribution. We characterize labor and education wedges in this setting analytically and numerically, using a calibrated example. We present ways to implement the optimum. In one implementation there is a common labor income tax schedule, and a repayment schedule for government loans given out to agents during education. These repayment plans are contingent on loan size and income and capture the history dependence of the labor wedges. Applying the model to US-data and a binary education decision (graduating from college or not) we characterize optimal labor wedges for individuals without college degree and with college degree. The labor wedge of college graduates as a function of income lies first strictly above their counterparts from high-school, but this reverses at higher incomes. The loan repayment schedule is hump-shaped in income for college graduates. |
| Keywords: | optimal dynamic taxation, education, implementation |
| JEL: | H21 H23 I21 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6056&r=edu |
| By: | Wikström, Magnus (Department of Economics, Umeå University); Wikström, Christina (Department of Applied Educational Science, Umeå University) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to find out if the income premium from university entrance differs with respect to prior achievement as measured by previous grades. Using income at the age of 28 to 30, we analyze if high-achievers have larger income premiums from entering university than low-achievers in a sample of Swedish upper secondary school students. We find that income differences generally are positive, albeit larger for females than for males. It is also found that the income premium is larger for high-achievers than for low-achievers. However, especially for males, the income premium rises only marginally with prior achievement for a large part of the grade distribution, indicating that there are only small differences in the returns to university entrance for a majority of upper secondary school graduates. |
| Keywords: | Premium; Predictive validity; Upper secondary GPA; Achievement; University entrance |
| JEL: | I21 J24 |
| Date: | 2011–11–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:umnees:0834&r=edu |
| By: | Catherine Haeck; Pierre Lefebvre; Philip Merrigan |
| Abstract: | We investigate the impact of an ambitious provincial school reform in Canada on students’ mathematical achievements. This reform provides advantages for the purpose of evaluation and cuts across some of the methodological difficulties of previous research. First, the reform was implemented in every school across the province in both primary and secondary schools. Second, we can differentiate impacts according to the number of years students are affected by the reform. Third, our data set provides a longer observation period than typically encountered in the literature. We find negative effects on students’ mathematical achievements at all points of the skills distribution. |
| Keywords: | School reform, Math achievements, DID and CIC estimators |
| JEL: | I21 I28 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:lacicr:1135&r=edu |
| By: | Maciej Jakubowski (Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development); Artur Pokropek (Institute of Educational Research (IBE)) |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses a method to compare progress in reading achievement from primary to secondary school across countries. The method is similar to value-added models that take into account intake levels when comparing student progress in different schools. Value-added models are preferred over raw scores as they better reflect school efforts. The method dis-cussed in this paper uses measures of achievement in primary schools from PIRLS and com-pares them to secondary school results from PISA. Changes in achievement are estimated using IRT models and random draws of test items. Results describe an interval in which esti-mates of progress can lie, depending on the comparability of these two assessments. Estimates of progress are also adjusted for student age, gender and other characteristics that differ be-tween countries and surveys. Separate results by gender, immigrant status, and proficiency level provide a detailed picture of how students in different countries progress in school from the age of 10 to 15. |
| Keywords: | human capital, cognitive skills, international student achievement tests, education, PISA, PIRLS |
| JEL: | I21 J24 O15 P50 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2011-20&r=edu |
| By: | Ferreira, Francisco H. G.; Gignoux, Jeremie |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes two related measures of educational inequality: one for educational achievement and another for educational opportunity. The former is the simple variance (or standard deviation) of test scores. Its selection is informed by consideration of two measurement issues that have typically been overlooked in the literature: the implications of the standardization of test scores for inequality indices, and the possible sample selection biases arising from the Program of International Student Assessment (PISA) sampling frame. The measure of inequality of educational opportunity is given by the share of the variance in test scores that is explained by pre-determined circumstances. Both measures are computed for the 57 countries in which PISA surveys were conducted in 2006. Inequality of opportunity accounts for up to 35 percent of all disparities in educational achievement. It is greater in (most of) continental Europe and Latin America than in Asia, Scandinavia, and North America. It is uncorrelated with average educational achievement and only weakly negatively correlated with per capita gross domestic product. It correlates negatively with the share of spending in primary schooling, and positively with tracking in secondary schools. |
| Keywords: | Teaching and Learning,Secondary Education,Education For All,Poverty Impact Evaluation,Tertiary Education |
| Date: | 2011–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5873&r=edu |
| By: | Facundo Albornoz; Antonio Cabrales; Esther Hauk |
| Abstract: | Immigration is an important problem in many societies, and it has wide-ranging effects on the educational systems of host countries. There is a now a large empirical literature, but very little theoretical work on this topic. We introduce a model of family immigration in a framework where school quality and student outcomes are determined endogenously. This allows us to explain the selection of immigrants in terms of parental motivation and the policies which favor a positive selection. Also, we can study the effect of immigration on the school system and how school quality may self-reinforce immigrants' and natives' choices. |
| Keywords: | education, immigration, school resources, parental involvement, immigrant sorting. |
| JEL: | I20 I21 I28 J24 J61 |
| Date: | 2011–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:autbar:888.11&r=edu |
| By: | Keslair, Francois (Paris School of Economics); Maurin, Eric (Paris School of Economics); McNally, Sandra (London School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | The need for education to help every child rather than focus on average attainment has become a more central part of the policy agenda in the US and the UK. Remedial programmes are often difficult to evaluate because participation is usually based on pupil characteristics that are largely unobservable to the analyst. In this paper we evaluate programmes for children with moderate levels of 'special educational needs' in England. We show that the decentralized design of the policy generates significant variations in access to remediation resources across children with similar prior levels of difficulty. However, this differential is not reflected in subsequent educational attainment – suggesting that the programme is ineffective for 'treated' children. In the second part of our analysis, we use demographic variation within schools to consider the effect of the programme on whole year groups. Our analysis is consistent with no overall effect on account of the combined direct and indirect (spillover) effects. Thus, the analysis suggests that a key way that English education purports to help children with learning difficulties is not working. |
| Keywords: | education, special needs, evaluation |
| JEL: | I2 |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp6069&r=edu |
| By: | Andrés Sánchez Jabba |
| Abstract: | In Colombia, ethnic students have a low academic achievement compared to their non-ethnic peers in standardized test scores on math and language. This achievement gap is persistent at the state level, especially in high ethnic density states. Using information regarding results from the state academic test (SABER 11), this study aims to corroborate the existence of an academic gap between ethnic and non-ethnic students and additionally, decompose it in factors related to observable characteristics related to the student, his family and school, non-observable factors. For this purpose, the methodology proposed by Blinder and Oaxaca applied to quantile regression is used in order to determine the existence of test score gaps throughout the distribution of academic performance. Results indicate that within states where there is a statistically significant academic achievement gap, a sizeable portion of it is attributed non-observable factors. Nonetheless, for distinct levels of academic performance, the gap size and the extent to which it can be attributed non-observable factors vary according to the state which is examined. RESUMEN: En Colombia, los estudiantes pertenecientes a una etnia presentan un desempeño inferior al de sus pares no étnicos en los puntajes asociados a pruebas académicas estandarizadas, en las áreas de matemática y lenguaje. Dicha brecha es persistente a nivel departamental, especialmente entre los departamentos donde reside un alto porcentaje de población étnica. Utilizando información asociada a los resultados en la prueba SABER 11, este estudio encuentra una brecha en el desempeño académico de los estudiantes étnicos con los no étnicos y la descompone en factores relacionados con las características observables de los estudiantes, sus familias y su colegio, así como factores no observados. Para ello se utiliza la metodología propuesta por Blinder y Oaxaca, la cual se extiende al análisis de regresiones por cuantiles. Los resultados indican que en los departamentos donde la brecha académica es estadísticamente significativa, la mayor parte de esta es atribuible a factores no observables. Sin embargo, para distintos niveles de desempeño académico, el comportamiento de la misma y sus factores explicativos son diversos. |
| Date: | 2011–11–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000102:009109&r=edu |
| By: | Sammara Soares; Tatiane Menezes |
| Abstract: | The quality of the educational system is crucial to the most diverse socioeconomic and cultural aspects of a country. The objective of this paper is highlighting the importance of quality of education to explain the wide income disparities between Brazilian people. In face of such evidence, and considering the need to better understand the factors associated with education quality and efficiency, this study aims to investigate which factors are the most significant to determine elementary school students’ performance in capital and small towns. For this purpose, it will be used the Brazilian Educational Search (SAEB) for 4th grades of elementary education. The estimation method is the hierarchical regression, which, in this work, will be structured into 2 levels, respectively: students, and school. The results suggest, after socioeconomic control, the positive correlation of principal’s characteristic; class-time, kindergarten and presence of library to a better performance. In opposite way, the influence of professor’s turnover seems to be quite harmful to determine the student´s score in capital city and small towns respectively. These results can serve as aid to public policies aimed at equity and educational qualification. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p1707&r=edu |
| By: | Christos Koutsampelas and Panos Tsakloglou |
| Abstract: | The present paper examines the short-run distributional impact of public education in Greece using the micro-data of the 2004/5 Household Budget Survey. The aggregate distributional impact of public education is found to be progressive although the incidence varies according to the level of education under examination. In-kind transfers of public education services in the fields of primary and secondary education lead to a considerable decline in relative inequality, whereas transfers in the field of tertiary education appear to have a small distributional impact whose size and sign depend on the treatment of tertiary education students living away from the parental home. When absolute inequality indices are used instead of the relative ones, primary education transfers retain their progressivity, while secondary education transfers appear almost neutral and tertiary education transfers become quite regressive. The main policy implications of the findings are outlined in the concluding section. |
| Keywords: | public education, redistribution |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucy:cypeua:12-2011&r=edu |
| By: | Cathleen Johnson; Claude Montmarquette |
| Abstract: | Evidence is presented on whether the willingness to borrow for education varies significantly among some at-risk students: low SES levels, First Nations, and first generation students. 1248 students participated in a survey, a numeracy assessment and took part in experimental decisions. During these sessions, students were presented with a series of paid binary decisions: bursaries vs. cash, loans for postsecondary education studies vs. cash, intertemporal decisions and risky decisions. The paid binary decisions involved trade-offs between cash and various types of student financial aid, allowing us to generate a cost per dollar of educational financing (grants, loans, mixtures of loans and grants). Prices for the various types of educational financing overlapped substantially in order to more clearly distinguish the impact of loan aversion on the decision to take up financial assistance to pursue PSE. Results show that several factors influence the subjects’ decisions about education financing but the most prominent influence was the price of educational subsidies. Participants were marginally sensitive to the form of financing (grant or loan), with no evidence of systematic loan aversion being detected. <P>Cette étude montre que la volonté d'emprunter pour s’instruire varie considérablement chez certains étudiants issus de milieu socio-économique faible, des Premières nations, et les étudiants de première génération. 1248 étudiants ont participé à une enquête, une évaluation de leur niveau de connaissances numériques et ont pris part à des décisions expérimentales. Pendant ces séances, les étudiants ont été confrontés à une série de décisions binaires rémunérées : bourses vs dollars, prêts d’études pour le postsecondaire vs dollars, des décisions intertemporelles et des décisions risquées. Les décisions binaires rémunérées impliquant un arbitrage entre des dollars et divers types d'aide financière, nous ont permis de générer un coût par dollar du financement de l'éducation (bourses, prêts, mélanges de prêts et de bourses). Les prix pour les différents types de financement de l'éducation se chevauchent de manière substantielle pour permettre de distinguer clairement l'impact de l'aversion pour les prêts sur la décision de prendre ou non l’option d’une aide financière pour poursuivre des études postsecondaires. Les résultats montrent que plusieurs facteurs influencent les décisions des sujets sur le financement de leur éducation, mais l'influence la plus importante est le prix en dollars des subventions à l'éducation. Les participants ont été légèrement influencés par la forme de financement (subvention ou prêt), mais aucune preuve d'aversion pour les prêts n’a été décelée. |
| Keywords: | Intertemporal choice, field experiments, risk attitudes, loans aversion, choix intertemporels, expériences sur le terrain, attitudes vis-à-vis des risques, l'aversion aux prêts d’études. |
| Date: | 2011–11–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2011s-67&r=edu |
| By: | Bruno S. Frey; Margit Osterloh |
| Abstract: | Research rankings based on publications and citations today dominate governance of academia. Yet they have unintended side effects on individual scholars and academic institutions and can be counterproductive. They induce a substitution of the “taste for science” by a “taste for publication”. We suggest as alternatives careful selection and socialization of scholars, supplemented by periodic self-evaluations and awards. Neither should rankings be a basis for the distributions of funds within universities. Rather, qualified individual scholars should be supported by basic funds to be able to engage in new and unconventional research topics and methods. |
| Keywords: | Academic governance, rankings, motivation, selection, socialization |
| JEL: | A10 D02 H83 L23 M50 |
| Date: | 2011–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:econwp:039&r=edu |
| By: | Durante, Ruben; Labartino, Giovanna; Perotti, Roberto |
| Abstract: | Decentralization can lead to "good" or "bad" outcomes depending on the socio-cultural norms of the targeted communities. We investigate this issue by looking at the evolution of familism and nepotism in the Italian academia before and after the 1998 reform, which decentralized the recruitment of professors from the national to the university level. To capture familism we use a novel dataset on Italian university professors between 1988 and 2008 focusing on the informative content of last names. We construct two indices of "homonymy" which capture the concentration of last names in a given academic department relative to that in the underlying general population. Our results suggest that increased autonomy by local university officials resulted in a significant increase in the incidence of familism in areas characterized by low civic capital but not in areas with higher civic capital. |
| Keywords: | Civic capital; Familism; Higher education |
| JEL: | D71 D73 I23 Z1 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:8645&r=edu |
| By: | Gordon C. Winston; Catharine B. Hill; David Davis-Van Atta; Rishad Gambhir |
| Abstract: | Using data for 2008/09, we update a 2001/02 study that examined the pricing policies with respect to family income at highly selective private colleges and universities and the distribution of students by family income at these schools. We find significant reductions in net prices relative to sticker prices and incomes across all income quintiles, as expected given financial aid policy changes at these schools in recent years. More interestingly, we find some increase in the share of low-income students at these schools, an increase on average from about 10% to 11% from the bottom 40% of the income distribution. We also find an increase in the share of the student body from the top income quintile receiving financial aid (from about 14.5% to 18% of the student body). The share of all students, aided and non-aided, from the top 20% of the income distribution has remained approximately constant during this period, suggesting that the increase in the share of aided students in this quintile has come from formerly unaided high income students. |
| Date: | 2011–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wil:wilehe:73&r=edu |
| By: | Stanislaw Walukiewicz; Aneta Wiktorzak |
| Abstract: | We consider education as a number of multistage creative processes and analyse one of them - teaching knowledge (process P1) - in detail. In part 1 we describe the idea of Virtual Production Line (VPL), introduced by Walukiewicz in 2006 as an extension of Classical Production Line (CPL), an epitome of our perception of Henry Ford’s assembly line. Teachers connected by modern ICT network (in most cases it will just be the Internet) provide education to students on a VPL – kind of a virtual belt - instructing a given set of subjects (tasks) in a prescribed sequence, offering knowledge by a prescribed methodology, etc. In contrast to CPL, teachers on VPL will use their brain power mostly and divide the teaching process into a number of tasks in what we will call ‘self-organization of VPL’. In that perspective, VPL shall be defined as a conscious experience of a division of labour into tasks (self-organization) via the Internet, while CPL will just remain a partition of labour into a fixed number of jobs (tasks). In part 2 we introduce the value of human capital of a given student as a measure of P1 efficiency and compare it with the indicators used so far. In Poland the problem is that, different skills of students are not measured within one, integrated system. We propose a solution to this problem. Field study results are furnished. In conclusion, we formulate suggestions for further research. Key words: Human capital; Virtual Production Line (VPL); Classical Production Line (CPL); efficiency of education. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p866&r=edu |
| By: | Cipollone, Angela |
| Abstract: | By using data from the latest wave of the Indonesia Life Family Survey, the present work investigates whether and to which extent child time allocation depends on the joint impact of liquidity constraints and risk attitudes. We employ a double selection model of school hours, by adding time preferences, risk attitudes and proxies of risks and shocks among the relevant regressors, and controlling for sample selection and endogeneity of liquidity constraints and school enrolment. To this aim, we exploit measures of time preferences and risk attitudes elicited from individuals’ responses to hypothetical gambles and consider the past occurrence of shocks to proxy the risk profiles of the households under the assumption that households use past income volatility to predict future volatility. It will be shown that, under liquidity constraints, risk averse parents raise a precautionary demand for education as an ex-ante risk coping strategy, so to insure future consumption through higher returns from their children’s work. |
| Keywords: | schooling; risk aversion; liquidity constraints; risks; shocks |
| JEL: | J13 J22 D91 |
| Date: | 2011–11–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:34575&r=edu |
| By: | Susan Dynarski; Jonathan Gruber; Danielle Li |
| Abstract: | The effect of vouchers on sorting between private and public schools depends upon the price elasticity of demand for private schooling. Estimating this elasticity is empirically challenging because prices and quantities are jointly determined in the market for private schooling. We exploit a unique and previously undocumented source of variation in private school tuition to estimate this key parameter. A majority of Catholic elementary schools offer discounts to families that enroll more than one child in the school in a given year. Catholic school tuition costs therefore depend upon the interaction of the number and spacing of a family’s children with the pricing policies of the local school. This within-neighborhood variation in tuition prices allows us to control for unobserved determinants of demand with a fine set of geographic fixed effects, while still identifying the price parameter. We use data from 3700 Catholic schools, matched to restricted Census data that identifies geography at the block level. We find that a standard deviation decrease in tuition prices increases the probability that a family will send its children to private school by one-half percentage point, which translates into an elasticity of Catholic school attendance with respect to tuition costs of -0.19. Our subgroup results suggest that a voucher program would disproportionately induce into private schools those who, along observable dimensions, are unlike those who currently attend private school. |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:11-34&r=edu |
| By: | Allison Morris |
| Abstract: | This report discusses the most relevant issues concerning student standardised testing in which there are no-stakes for students (“standardised testing”) through a literature review and a review of the trends in standardised testing in OECD countries. Unlike standardised tests in which there are high-stakes for students, no-stakes implies that test results have no impact on the student’s academic career. The same tests, however, may have high stakes for teachers and schools. The report provides an overview of the standardised testing typology in the no-stakes context, including identifying the driving trends behind the gradual increase in standardised testing in OECD countries and the different purposes of standardised tests. Within this framework the report reviews how standardised tests with no-stakes for students are designed, implemented and used across OECD countries. The report also aims to synthesise the relevant empirical research on the impact of standardised testing on teaching and learning and to draw out lessons from the literature on aspects of standardised tests that are more effective in improving student outcomes. Key debates concerning standardised testing are identified throughout and include (among others): 1) selecting the appropriate test purpose; 2) teacher evaluation based on student test results; 3) the impact of publishing standardised test results; and 4) minimising strategic behaviour by teachers and administrators in standardised testing.<BR>Ce rapport analyse les questions essentielles sur les tests standardisés des élèves dont les résultats n’ont pas d’implications pour les élèves (« tests standardisés ») à travers une revue de la littérature et une analyse des tendances dans les pays de l’OCDE. Ce type de tests n’a pas d’implications pour le parcours scolaire des élèves. Ces mêmes tests peuvent toutefois avoir des conséquences pour les enseignants et les écoles. Le rapport offre une typologie de l’utilisation des tests standardisés sans conséquences pour les élèves y compris les raisons pour l’augmentation de leur utilisation dans les pays de l’OCDE et ses différents objectifs. Dans ce cadre, le rapport analyse la façon dont les tests standardisés sans conséquences pour les élèves sont conçus, implémentés et utilisés dans les pays de l’OCDE. Le rapport a aussi pour buts de synthétiser la recherche empirique pertinente sur l’impact des tests standardisés sur l’enseignement et l’apprentissage et de retirer des leçons de la littérature sur les aspects des tests standardisés qui sont plus efficaces dans l’amélioration des résultats des élèves. Des débats clés concernant les tests standardisés sont identifiés, notamment (entre autres) : 1) sélectionner l’objectif approprié pour le test ; 2) évaluation des enseignants sur la base des résultats des tests standardisés des élèves ; 3) l’impact de la publication des résultats des tests standardisés des élèves ; et 4) minimisation du comportement stratégique des enseignants et administrateurs dans la mise en place des tests standardisés. |
| Date: | 2011–10–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:eduaab:65-en&r=edu |
| By: | Andrade, Eduardo de Carvalho; Moita, Rodrigo Menon Simões; Silva, Carlos Eduardo Lobo |
| Date: | 2011–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ibm:ibmecp:wpe_245&r=edu |
| By: | Amparo Castelló-Climent; Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses whether in developing countries mass education is more growth enhancing than to have a minority well educated elite. Using the Indian census data as a benchmark and enrollment rates at different levels of education we compute annual attainment levels for a panel of 16 Indian states from 1961 to 2001. Results indicate that if the reduction of illiteracy stops at the primary level of education, it is not worthwhile for growth. Instead, the findings reveal a strong and robust significant effect on growth of a greater share of population completing tertiary education. The economic impact is also found to be very large: if one percent of the adult population were to complete tertiary education instead of completing only primary, the annual growth rate could increase by about 4 percentage points. Moreover, we find that a one percentage change in tertiary education has the same effect on growth as a decrease in illiteracy by 13 percentage points. A sensitivity analysis shows the results are unlikely to be driven by omitted variables, structural breaks, reverse causation or atypical observations. |
| Keywords: | Distribution of education, attainment levels, economic growth, panel data |
| JEL: | I28 O11 O50 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp1086&r=edu |
| By: | Sébastien Massoni (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne); Jean-Christophe Vergnaud (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | The Action Lecture program is an innovative teaching method run in some nursery and primary schools in Paris and designed to improve pupils' literacy. We report the results of an evaluation of this program. We describe the experimental protocol that was built to estimate the program's impact on several types of indicators. Data were processed following a Differences-in-Differences (DID) method. Then we use the estimation of the impact on academic achievement to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis and take a reduction of the class size program as a benchmark. The results are positive for the Action Lecture program. |
| Keywords: | Economics of education, evaluation Cost-effectiveness analysis, fiel experiment. |
| JEL: | C93 I20 |
| Date: | 2011–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:11055&r=edu |
| By: | Heers, M.; Van Klaveren, C.; Groot, W. and Maassen van den Brink, H. |
| Abstract: | Community schools are quickly increasing in number, but there is no evidence whether they are more effective than traditional schools. No study has empirically compared community schools to other schools. This study reviews the literature on the effectiveness of community schools. We focus on their three main components: cooperation with external organizations, parental involvement, and extracurricular activities. This review indicates that involving external organizations seems valuable in terms of social cohesion in neighborhoods. Parental involvement is particularly important for the educational development of lower socio-economic status families. Extracurricular activities positively relate to students? development in academic and social terms. |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tir:wpaper:41&r=edu |
| By: | Ruben Durante; Giovanna Labartino; Roberto Perotti |
| Abstract: | Decentralization can lead to "good" or "bad" outcomes depending on the socio-cultural norms of the targeted communities. We investigate this issue by looking at the evolution of familism and nepotism in the Italian academia before and after the 1998 reform, which decentralized the recruitment of professors from the national to the university level. To capture familism we use a novel dataset on Italian university professors between 1988 and 2008 focusing on the informative content of last names. We construct two indices of “homonymy” which capture the concentration of last names in a given academic department relative to that in the underlying general population. Our results suggest that increased autonomy by local university officials resulted in a significant increase in the incidence of familism in areas characterized by low civic capital but not in areas with higher civic capital. |
| JEL: | D71 D73 I23 J44 Z1 |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17572&r=edu |
| By: | Renato Garcia; Veneziano Araujo; Suelene Mascarini; Emerson Santos |
| Abstract: | The main aim of this paper is to exam the local dimension of the university and industry linkages. It is widely recognized in the literature that academic research is an important source of new knowledge to the innovative efforts of the firms. Many authors, such as Audrescht and Feldman (1996), Acs and Varga (2005), Breschi and Lissoni (2009), have shown that academic research is positively correlated with firms’ innovation at the geographical level. There are two reasons that are pointed out for this correlation. First, there are many ways in which knowledge generated by academic research can spill over to the firms, such as research papers, patents and informal contacts. Second, geographical proximity can encourage cooperation between academic researchers and the R&D staff in the firms. In this way, this paper tries to measure empirically the geographical dimension of the university-industry linkages in Brazil, in the same way to the first effort presented in ERSA 2010 (Garcia et al, 2010). To do that, it was used data from the Brazilian Research Council (CNPq), collected at the CNPq Directory of Research Groups of Brazilian universities. The data shows that in 2008 there were 22,797 research groups from 422 institutions. Among these research groups, 2,726 declared that they have interactions with more than 3,800 firms, which means 5,132 interactions between university and industry. Data were organized both in firm-level and in research group-level; allow the identification of the localization of the firm and of the research group. Among the 5,132 interactions between firms and research groups, it was possible to see that 43.6% of interactions occur inside the same city; 51.2% inside the same region; and 75.3% in the same state. These results show the importance of the local dimension of the interactions between academic research of the university and innovative efforts of the firms. In addition, it was done some empirical tests in order to identify the main factors that contribute to foster university-industry linkages. |
| Date: | 2011–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwrsa:ersa11p581&r=edu |
| By: | Barb Bloemhof (Department of Economics and BHSc Program, McMaster University); John Livernois (Department of Economics and Finance, University of Guelph) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines learning outcomes in a one-semester introductory microeconomics course where contact time with the instructor was reduced by two-thirds and students were expected to view pre-recorded lectures on-line and come to class prepared to engage in discussion. Students were pre-and post-tested using the Test of Understanding in College Economics (TUCE - 4). Learning outcomes as measured by the change in test scores are found to be as good as or better than calibrating data for groups assessed using the TUCE - 4. In addition to being a more enjoyable course for the instructor, the course design can be part of a more self-directed curriculum that uses available resources more efficiently to achieve similar learning objectives to a lecture-based introductory course. |
| Keywords: | active learning, assessment, computer-assisted instruction, introductory microeconomics |
| JEL: | A22 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gue:guelph:2011-11&r=edu |