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on Education |
| By: | Esteban M. Aucejo; Jacob French; Paola Ugalde Araya; Basit Zafar |
| Abstract: | Information frictions significantly shape students' academic trajectories, but their differential impact across student backgrounds remains understudied. Using a novel panel survey capturing incoming students' subjective expectations and anonymized transcript data from Arizona State University, we first show that parental education strongly predicts educational success, even after controlling for demographics and measurable college preparation. First-generation students enter college less informed and with more uncertain beliefs, facing substantial challenges stemming from limited understanding and uncertainty about the higher education setting. A Bayesian expected utility maximization model demonstrates that higher uncertainty alone can sustain persistent achievement gaps. Empirically, students update their beliefs and make academic decisions consistent with the model’s predictions. Finally, leveraging a natural experiment involving a targeted first-year experience program for academically marginal students, we demonstrate that cost-effective interventions can successfully reduce knowledge frictions, improve retention, and encourage beneficial early major switching. |
| JEL: | D83 I23 I24 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34129 |
| By: | Douglas O. Staiger; Thomas J. Kane; Brian D. Johnson |
| Abstract: | Non-experimental value-added models have been shown to yield forecast-unbiased estimates of teacher and school effects. To investigate, we propose a dynamic state-space model of knowledge accumulation, in which test scores are imperfect measures of knowledge, and students receive temporary and persistent shocks to their stock of knowledge each period. The model identifies two primary sources of bias: transient factors in baseline scores (measurement error or transitory effects of prior teachers) and heterogeneous student growth rates. We propose diagnostic tests and corrections for each. Using eleven years of data from North Carolina, we find little evidence of heterogeneous student growth. Rather, the primary source of bias is attenuation of the baseline coefficient, which opens the door to selection on correlates of true baseline knowledge. Although conventional value-added estimates are biased for individual teachers due to attenuation, we find they are forecast unbiased when applied across a sample of teachers, due to the offsetting relationship between bias and teachers’ true effectiveness. When achievement follows the state-space model and there is no heterogeneity in growth rates, the attenuation-corrected value-added model (ACVAM) should yield unbiased estimates of a wide range educational interventions, not just teachers and schools. |
| JEL: | I21 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34119 |
| By: | Uditi Karna; John List; Andrew Simon; Haruka Uchida |
| Abstract: | Parents are crucial to children's educational success, but the role of parental education in fostering academic excellence remains underexplored. Using longitudinal administrative data covering all North Carolina public school students, we document five facts about first generation excellence gaps. We find large excellence gaps emerge by 3rd grade across all demographics and persist through high school. Yet, socioeconomic status and school quality explain only one-third of the gaps. The overarching facts reveal that excellence gaps reflect deeper challenges rooted in parental human capital that manifest early and compound over time, rather than merely consequences of socioeconomic disadvantage or school quality differences. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:artefa:00825 |
| By: | Luca Bonacini; Giuseppe Pignataro; Veronica Rattini |
| Abstract: | Understanding the role of information among disadvantaged students is crucial in explaining their investment decisions in higher education. Indeed, information barriers on the returns and the gains from completing college may explain a substantial share of variation in students' degree completion. We conduct a field experiment with 7, 806 university students in Italy who benefit from financial aid assistance, by providing information, either on the labor market returns of completing college or on the education returns of meeting the academic requirements attached to the financial aid. Our results suggest that only the latter information treatment has a positive effect on academic performance, increasing the number of credits obtained by around 3, and by decreasing the probability of dropout by around 4 percentage points. We also find that the results are mediated by an aspiration lift generated by our treatment. |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2507.02560 |
| By: | El Fatmaoui, Ahmed (University of Wisconsin, La Crosse); Ransom, Tyler (University of Oklahoma) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the extent to which U.S. universities strategically use athletic admissions to shape the socioeconomic status (SES) of their student bodies. Using a novel dataset linking NCAA roster data to neighborhood characteristics, we document substantial SES segregation across sports and universities. More selective institutions, particularly elite private universities, allocate up to 30% of enrollment to athletes who typically come from higher-SES backgrounds than their non-athlete peers. However, contrary to popular belief, we find that elite institutions enroll similarly wealthy athletes across all sports. Estimates of our structural model of sports bundle choice reveal that this SES homogeneity across sports limits universities' ability to systematically choose sports offerings to target higher-SES students. Counterfactual analyses demonstrate that athletic enrollment caps would create additional seats for non-athletes but require complementary policies to meaningfully impact socioeconomic mobility. |
| Keywords: | university admissions, income segregation, college athletics, higher education |
| JEL: | C35 I23 I24 L83 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18071 |
| By: | Bastian Silvester Bruestle; Patrick Lehnert; Erik Buunk; Uschi Backes-Gellner; Dietmar Harhoff |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes whether inventor teams composed of members with diverse educational backgrounds, both academic and vocational, exhibit higher performance than teams with the same educational backgrounds. To exploit the different educational backgrounds among patent inventors in Switzerland, we construct a unique dataset of 35, 486 inventors. This dataset links individual patenting activities from European Patent Office data from 1980-2021, with detailed biographical information obtained from LinkedIn. Using a supermodularity framework to assess complementarity, we find that inventor teams composed of members with academic and vocational backgrounds (as opposed to members with the same background) achieve higher team performance, measured by the quality of their jointly filed patents. This complementarity is even stronger in teams with at least one team member from a University of Applied Sciences. Further analysis reveals heterogeneous effects across technological fields. Overall, our findings show the importance of strategically combining different educational backgrounds in inventor teams, thereby highlighting the value of maintaining a balanced educational landscape. |
| Keywords: | team productivity, inventor biographies, vocational education, patent quality |
| JEL: | I23 I26 M54 O32 |
| Date: | 2025–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iso:educat:0248 |
| By: | Kristina Butaeva; Lian Chen; Steven N. Durlauf; Albert Park |
| Abstract: | This paper examines intergenerational mobility in China and Russia during their transitions from central planning to market systems. We consider mobility as movement captured by changes in status between parents and children. We provide estimates of overall mobility, which involves mobility during transition to a system's steady state, as well as steady state mobility, which captures long-run mobility independent of transitional dynamics or shifts in the marginal distribution of outcomes across generations. We further decompose overall mobility into structural and exchange components. We find that China exhibits more overall educational mobility than Russia mostly due to greater structural mobility, while Russia exhibits greater steady state educational mobility. In contrast, both the overall and steady state occupational mobility is similar in China and Russia. Comparing these results to the US, we find that steady state mobility in education is substantially higher in the US and Russia compared to China, but occupational steady state mobility is comparable in all three countries. |
| JEL: | I24 J62 P2 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34124 |