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We quantify the total stock of balances eligible for the 2022 federal student loan forgiveness policy and explore which groups benefit most. Roughly $441 billion in balances are eligible for forgiveness, which would leave almost 40 percent of federal borrowers with no remaining balance. The borrowers who benefit most, as measured by the ratio of forgiven balances to balances held, are younger, have lower credit scores, and live in lower-income neighborhoods. Compared to other salient fiscal policies, the forgiveness policy distributes less benefit to lower income ZIP codes than the Earned Income Tax Credit, but more benefit to lower income ZIP codes than the 2019 Child Tax Credit and the 2019 education tax credits for higher education. Lastly, we note a recent uptick in credit card and auto loan delinquency for student loan borrowers that may portend more widespread payment difficulties for borrowers if payments resume without relief.

In this paper we analyse the association between maternal well-being and child development at different ages. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) which captures maternal life satisfaction and numerous cognitive and non-cognitive child development outcomes. We identify a strong positive association between mothers' life satisfaction and their children's development when these are toddlers (2-3 years, VAB scores), of primary school age (5-10 years, SEB scores and Big 5) and in adolescence (11-14 years, life satisfaction, school grades and self-reported Big 5). This relationship holds when we control for a wide range of potentially confounding factors, including maternal education, employment, household income and maternal personality traits. We confirm our main findings with an IV estimation where we instrument contemporaneous maternal life satisfaction with that measured pre-birth and with a value-added model as some child outcomes are observed twice at different ages. Our findings suggest that mothers' life satisfaction is beneficial for their children's development at all ages and that it is fruitful for policy makers to identify measures through which maternal well-being can be raised.

We study the effects of increased school spending in rural American school districts by leveraging the introduction and subsequent expansion of Wisconsin's Sparsity Aid Program. We find that the program, which provides additional state funding to small and isolated school districts, increased spending in eligible districts by 2% annually and that districts primarily allocated funds to areas with low baseline budget shares. This increased spending has little effect on standardized test scores, but modestly increases college enrollment and completion for students with a low likelihood of attending or completing college.

Growing reliance on student loans and repayment difficulties have raised concerns of a student debt crisis in the United States. However, little is known about the effects of student borrowing on human capital and long-run financial well-being. The authors use variation induced by recent expansions in federal loan limits, together with administrative schooling, earnings, and credit records, to identify the effects of increased student borrowing on credit-constrained students’ educational attainment, earnings, debt, and loan repayment. Increased student loan availability raises student debt and improves degree completion, later-life earnings, and student loan repayment while having no effect on homeownership or other types of debt. Annenberg Institute at Brown University

In this article, we contribute to the scant literature covering quantitative studies on the determinants of the non-academic staff incidence in higher education institutions by analysing how the proportion of non-academic staff is related to key features such as size, prestige, year of foundation and financial structure of universities. We apply nonlinear regression analysis to compare HEIs across Europe and the USA, taking into account time and cross-country heterogeneity of the two balanced panel datasets concerning European and American universities over a period of 6 years (2011-2016 for Europe and 2012-2017 for the USA). Evidence suggests that in both Europe and the USA, public and larger (if sufficiently large) as well as more research-oriented units are characterised by a higher proportion of non-academic staff. In Europe, we observe an inverted U-shaped effect of the share of non-personnel expenditure and the foundation year on the proportion of non-academic staff, while the proportion of non-academic staff decreases with the share of core and third-party funding. For the USA, we obtain similar findings except that the share of core funding and third-party funding is characterised by a U-shaped effect, and the impact of the share of non-personnel expenditure has no empirical effect on the proportion of non-academic staff. Additionally, we discover that some factors that contribute to the proportion of non-academic staff may constitute indicators of performance, suggesting the need for further research to extend our knowledge on the complex issue of the role played by non-academic staff in university performance.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10734-022-00819-7.

The pandemic COVID-19 has had an impact around the world and in the European Union, putting unprecedented pressure on education and training systems. It has fundamentally changed the way we learn, teach, communicate and collaborate in our education and training communities. This has implications for students, families, teachers, trainers, institutional leaders and society as a whole. Most European Member States have decided to extend the physical closure of education and training institutions, while mobilising alternative solutions and support for distance education and learning, especially digital solutions. This transformation has challenged education and training systems and stakeholders in these areas in Member States, particularly students and families, as well as teachers and trainers, but it has also provided them with valuable learning and training experiences, accelerated the digital transformation of education and training institutions. Emerging and disruptive technologies have undergone numerous and sufficient changes to ensure this. Thus, they will change the face and vision of higher education institutions.

O estudo que se segue pretende avaliar a literacia financeira dos portugueses, analisar a relação dos fatores demográficos e socioeconómicos e a literacia financeira, averiguar a associação entre o enviesamento comportamental (sobre e sub confiança) e a literacia financeira e, por último, estudar a correlação entre a atitude financeira e a literacia financeira. No presente estudo, a medição adotada de literacia financeira passa pela aferição do nível de conhecimento financeiro através de um índice. Com o intuito de recolher informação relevante para a realização da dissertação, utilizou- se como instrumento subjacente à presente investigação o inquérito elaborado e disponibilizado pela Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (CMVM), em 2022. O questionário visou aprofundar o conhecimento financeiro sobre os investidores e potenciais investidores em Portugal e as suas características demográficas e socioeconómicas. A amostra é composta por 1126 respondentes. Após a análise exaustiva da informação recolhida, os resultados mostram baixos níveis de literacia financeira em diferentes grupos demográficos e socioeconómicos e sugerem novas evidências sobre a relação entre os fatores demográficos e socioeconómicos e os conceitos financeiros. No que diz respeito ao enviesamento comportamental (sobre e sub confiança), é possível verificar a associação entre o enviesamento comportamental e as variáveis demográficas e socioeconómicas. Os resultados demonstram a existência de correlação positiva entre a literacia financeira e a atitude financeira. The following study aims to assess the financial literacy of the Portuguese individuals, analyze the relationship between demographic and socioeconomic factors and financial literacy, investigate the association between the behavioral bias of overconfidence and underconfidence and financial literacy and, finally, study the correlation between financial attitude and financial literacy. In the present study, the adopted measurement of financial literacy involves measuring the level of financial knowledge through an index. In order to collect relevant information for the completion of the dissertation, the survey prepared and made available by the Comissão do Mercado de Valores Mobiliários (CMVM) in 2022 was used as an instrument underlying the present investigation. The questionnaire aimed to deepen financial knowledge about the investors and potential investors in Portugal and its demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The sample is composed of 1126 respondents. After exhaustive analysis of the collected information, the results show low levels of financial literacy in different demographic and socioeconomic groups and suggest new evidence on the relationship between demographic and socioeconomic factors and financial concepts. Regarding the behavioral bias of overconfidence and underconfidence, it is possible to prove the association between the behavioral bias and the demographic and socioeconomic variables. The results show the existence of a positive correlation between financial literacy and financial attitude.

We examine US children whose parents won the lottery to trace out the effect of financial resources on college attendance. The analysis leverages federal tax and financial aid records and substantial variation in win size and timing. While per-dollar effects are modest, the relationship is weakly concave, with a high upper bound for amounts greatly exceeding college costs. Effects are smaller among low-SES households, not sensitive to how early in adolescence the shock occurs, and not moderated by financial aid crowd-out. The results imply that households derive consumption value from college, and household financial constraints alone do not inhibit attendance. (JEL G51, I22, I23, I24, I26, I28, J24, J31)

Purpose: The purpose of the research of this problem is to obtain relevant information about the features of student education in small groups, as well as to develop recommendations for improving the educational process. Design /Methodology/Approach: The article considers methodological issues of organizing the educational process in small academic groups for bachelors and specialists (masters) in the conditions of reducing classroom classes. In recent years, groups of students with small numbers have appeared in higher education in some areas of training in senior courses. Practice shows that conducting classes in a small group causes a number of difficulties. Despite the conditions of almost individual training, students quickly get tired; they are disconnected from academic work; the quality of education is reduced; there is a need to adapt previous methods and forms of education to a new situation, and from the point of view of organizing the educational process economic problems for the university administration arise. Findings: The authors presented the reasons for the appearance of small groups at the university, the economic feasibility of training small groups and approaches to solving this problem. Guidelines for optimizing financial costs in the education of small academic groups have also been identified Originality/Value: The novelty of the research consists in generalization and application of the known and innovative methods of education to underfilled groups. The increasing role of the teacher and level of his professionalism which directly depends on extent of mastering the electronic information and education environment, innovative methods of training and ability to apply them in educational process taking into account specifics of work in relation to low-complete groups is established.

Zusammenfassung: Die derzeit um Finanzwissensvermittlung und Finanzerziehung einerseits sowie um Finanzbildung im Rahmen der sozioökonomischen Bildung andererseits geführte Debatte ist komplex und mehrdimensional. Entlang des didaktischen „Kontinuums von Vermittlungsinteressen“ (Vielhaber 1999a) wird eine Systematisierung der aktuellen Finanzbildungsdebatte bezüglich Bildungswert und Reflexionsgrad anhand der Analyse von Legitimationen, Zielen und Konzeptionen, wie sie in relevanten Überblicksdarstellungen (Lutter 2017, Willis 2017) und weiteren einschlägigen Quellen zum Ausdruck kommen, vorgenommen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass mit einer Finanzerziehung monoperspektivisch, monoparadigmatisch und unterkomplex agiert wird sowie funktional-angepasste Verhaltensweisen anstrebt werden. Daraus folgend werden auf diesem Kontinuum überwiegend die unteren Stufen wie unreflektiertes, technisches und teilweise auch praktisches Vermittlungsinteresse eingenommen. Eine Finanzbildung als integraler Teil einer breiten sozioökonomischen Bildung basiert hingegen auf Subjekt- und Problemorientierung, Sozialwissenschaftlichkeit sowie Pluralität und zielt darauf ab, Menschen neben der Selbstbestimmung ihrer Lebenslage zu einer kritischen Reflexion und aufgeklärten Mitgestaltung der herrschenden, ökonomisch geprägten gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen zu befähigen. Eine derartige sozioökonomisch orientierte Finanzbildung rangiert überwiegend auf den höherrangigen Kategorien des Kontinuums, nämlich überwiegend auf einem anspruchsvolleren praktischen, kritisch-emanzipatorischen und konstruktivistischen Vermittlungsinteresse. Summary: The current debate around financial knowledge and financial literacy on the one hand, and financial education in the context of socio-economic education on the other, is complex and multi-dimensional. Along the didactic „continuum of educational ambitions“ (Vielhaber 1999a), a systematization of the current financial education debate is undertaken in terms of educational value and degree of reflection by analyzing legitimations, goals, and conceptions as expressed in relevant overviews (Lutter 2017, Willis 2017) and other appropriate sources. It becomes apparent that a narrowly tailored financial literacy is monoperspectival, monoparadigmatic and undercomplex, and that it aims for functionally adapted behaviour. As a result, the lower levels on this continuum, such as unreflective, technical, and in some cases practical educational ambitions, are predominantly taken. Financial education as an integral part of a broad socio-economic education is based on subject and problem orientation, social sciences, and plurality and, additionally, aims to enable human beings to critically reflect on and enlightenedly participate in shaping the prevailing, economically dominated social conditions, in addition to self-determination of their living situations. Such socio-economically oriented financial education ranks mainly on the higher-ranking categories of this continuum, namely predominantly on more sophisticated practical, critical-emancipatory and constructivist educational ambitions.

Summary: Financial literacy is very important for social participation. This paper presents an empirical evaluation of the determinants of financial literacy among students at a German university. An additional goal is the identification of gender differences in respect to financial literacy. The evaluation is based on the definition and surveys of financial literacy developed by the OECD, (A. Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014) and (Chen & Volpe, 1998) and the analysis of the “Big Three” questions. The results suggest a rather low level of financial literacy among female students. Additional factors such as a very good mathematics grade and logical thinking have a significantly positive impact on financial literacy. Students in economics are more likely to answer the “Big Three” questions correctly. This finding supports the hypothesis that education in economics helps to acquire knowledge of financial instruments and financial application. Zusammenfassung: Finanzkompetenzen haben für die gesellschaftliche Teilhabe eine hohe Bedeutung. Dieser Beitrag führt eine empirische Evaluation der Determinanten der Finanzkompetenz von Studierenden an einer deutschen Hochschule durch. Ein weiteres Ziel ist auch die Identifizierung der geschlechtsspezifischen Unterschiede bei der Finanzkompetenz. Die Evaluierung basiert auf der Definition und den Erhebungen zur Finanzkompetenz, die von der OECD entwickelt wurden, (A. Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014) und (Chen & Volpe, 1998) sowie auf der Analyse der ”Big Three”-Fragen. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf ein eher geringeres Niveau der Finanzkompetenz unter Studentinnen hin. Weitere Faktoren wie eine gute Mathematiknote und logisches Denken haben signifikant positive Auswirkungen auf die Finanzkompetenz. Studierende der Wirtschaftswissenschaften beantworten die ”Big Three”-Fragen mit höherer Wahrscheinlichkeit richtig. Dieses Ergebnis unterstützt die Hypothese, dass die wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Bildung dazu beiträgt, Kenntnisse über Finanzinstrumente und deren Anwendung zu erwerben.

In recent decades, several dozen colleges and universities have instituted loan-reduction initiatives (LRIs), such as “no-loan” programs. Institutions frequently cast such initiatives as efforts to increase socioeconomic diversity on campus. Using a difference-in-differences analytic strategy with national institution-level data, we examine the effect of LRI adoption at 54 institutions on three sets of outcomes: student borrowing, admission metrics, and campus diversity. Our analysis suggests LRIs decreased institution-level borrowing rates at private institutions, with no detected change at public institutions. Consistent with stated program goals, LRI adoption increased the number of Pell Grant recipients at both public and private institutions. However, adopting LRIs at public institutions reduced racial/ethnic diversity, suggesting possible trade-offs for LRI adoption in terms of student body diversity. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11162-020-09615-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

This paper exploits a 2018 reform of teachers' financial incentives to work in some French disadvantaged schools. Based on this quasi-natural experiment, it evaluates the impact of those incentives on teachers' stated preferences to move to such schools. Using data from the internal human resource management of some educational authority, we find that most responsive teachers have less experience and work already in those areas. Counterfactual simulations suggest that the policy has not hurt other disadvantaged schools, but rather induced some teachers not to remain in their current school or to opt less for regular schools.

We show that the electorate's preferences for using tuition to finance higher education strongly depend on the design of the payment scheme. In representative surveys of the German electorate (N>18,000), experimentally replacing regular upfront by deferred income-contingent payments increases public support for tuition by 18 percentage points. The treatment turns a plurality opposed to tuition into a strong majority of 62 percent in favor. Additional experiments reveal that the treatment effect similarly shows when framed as loan repayments, when answers carry political consequences, and in a survey of adolescents. Reduced fairness concerns and improved student situations act as strong mediators.

This paper examines the determinants of private tutoring in five major Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. The paper uses data extracted from the SAHWA Youth Survey (2016) and runs a probit model. The main findings indicate that age, receiving financial support, having educated parents, and living in urban areas increase the demand for private tutoring. Conversely, the results show that being a male student or a child of an employed mother would decrease the need for a private tutor. The empirical findings propose potential policy implications for MENA countries facing exacerbating gaps in the education system while emphasizing the challenges hindering public schools from delivering quality education.

Using the W.E. Upjohn Institute's Promise Programs Database - a searchable data set covering about 200 place-based scholarship programs-this paper explores how the design of Promise programs can shape their equity impacts. The authors first examine the landscape of place-based programs to understand the impact of program design on equity outcomes. They then use the statistical method of polychoric correlation to combine design features related to the equity potential of community-based Promise programs and develop an index expressing this concept. They conclude with two vignettes of recently announced Promise programs with different design features and implementation strategies to highlight the varied paths to equitable student outcomes. The paper finds that while some Promise programs have more potential than others to close equity gaps, whether they in fact do so will depend on implementation. Ongoing definitional debates, program heterogeneity, and the difficulty of observing implementation all complicate the task of assessing equity impact and underscore the need for more qualitative research focused on questions of equity and effectiveness.

Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) can play a central role in skill development and higher education expansion, yet their quality varies greatly within and among countries. This paper explores the relationship between programs’ practices and inputs (quality determinants) and student academic and labor market outcomes. It designs and conduct a novel survey to collect program-level information on quality determinants and average outcomes for Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Peru. Categories of quality determinants include training and curriculum, infrastructure, faculty, link with productive sector, costs and funding, and practices on student admission and institutional governance. The paper also collects administrative, student-level data on higher education and formal employment for SCP students in Brazil and Ecuador and match it to survey data. Machine learning methods are used to select the quality determinants that predict outcomes at the program and student levels. Estimates indicate that some quality determinants may favor academic and labor market outcomes while others may hinder them. Two practices predict improvements in all labor market outcomes in Brazil and Ecuador—teaching numerical competencies and providing job market information—and one practice— teaching numerical competencies—additionally predicts improvements in labor market outcomes for all survey countries. Since quality determinants account for 20-40 percent of the explained variation in student-level outcomes, quality determinants might have a role shrinking program quality gaps. Findings have implications for the design and replication of high-quality SCPs, their regulation, and the development of information systems.

I study the effects of the Future to Discover Project, a randomized experiment in which Canadian high school students were either invited to participate in career planning workshops or were made eligible for an $8,000 college grant. By matching the experimental data to post-secondary institution records and income tax files, I am able to examine the effects of the interventions on college enrollment, graduation, and earnings in adulthood. I show that the career education intervention greatly improved students' outcomes in the long run by improving academic matching. In contrast, the college grant had no long-term monetary benefits despite increasing college enrollment, which is consistent with classical models of human capital investment in the absence of credit constraints. My findings suggest that informational frictions and behavioral obstacles-rather than financial constraints-represent the primary barrier to four-year college enrollment faced by low-income students. And that they explain a large part of the gap in four-year college enrollment between high- and low-income students.

Financial aid decreases the cost of acquiring additional education. By using Italian administrative and survey data on financial aid recipients and exploiting sharp discontinuities in the amount of aid received, this paper identifies the causal effect of aid generosity on college performance and labor market outcomes. The results show that students with a higher cost of college earn more credits each year than those receiving higher financial aid. This gap generates a significant difference in the overall graduation time. No differences emerge in the GPA level or in the probability of working during college. After graduation, lower-aid recipients have a similar probability of continuing to study and of working after college as higher-aid beneficiaries. However, they secure a better job match in terms of working hours and payment but also in terms of skills matching.

Die Zahl der Privatschüler*innen steigt in Deutschland stetig, insbesondere in Ostdeutschland. Besonders häufig kommen sie aus Haushalten mit hohem Einkommen und hohem Bildungsniveau. Dieser Wochenbericht untersucht, welche Rolle die räumliche Verteilung von Privatschulen für die Struktur der Schüler*innenschaft spielt. In einem ersten Schritt wird untersucht, in welchen Gegenden es Privatschulen gibt. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Privatschulen in Ostdeutschland geografisch breiter und zufälliger verteilt sind als in Westdeutschland – es gibt sie also nicht nur dort, wo vor allem privilegierte Haushalte wohnen. In einem zweiten Schritt wird untersucht, ob die geografische Nähe zu einer Privatschule den Besuch selbiger wahrscheinlicher macht. Es zeigt sich, dass das bei einkommensstarken und bildungsnahen Haushalten der Fall ist. Einkommensschwache und bildungsferne Haushalte schicken ihre Kinder hingegen auch dann nicht häufiger auf eine Privatschule, wenn sie in deren Nähe wohnen. Offenbar stellen private Schulen für sie meistens keine Alternative dar. Wie weitere Analysen zeigen, ist dies auch, aber nicht allein durch das Schulgeld zu erklären. Nötig sind daher unter anderem zugänglichere Informationen über Privatschulen. Diese könnten stärker öffentlich gefördert werden – letztlich müssen aber auch öffentliche Schulen für privilegierte Haushalte attraktiver werden, um soziale Unterschiede mit Blick auf die Schulwahl zu reduzieren., DIW Wochenbericht

This study pairs variation stemming from volcanic eruptions from Kilauea with the census of Hawai'i's public schools student test scores to estimate the impact of particulates and sulfur dioxide on student performance. We leverage spatial correlations in pollution in conjunction with proximity to Kilauea and wind direction to construct predictions of pollution exposure at each school. We precisely estimate that increased particulate pollution leads to a small but statistically significant drop in average test scores. Then, utilizing Hawai'i's rich diversity across schools in baseline exposure, we estimate sharp nonlinearities schools with higher baseline levels of pollution experience larger decreases in test scores than schools with less pollution exposure on average. At levels of particulate pollution higher than six micrograms per cubic meter (μg/m3), we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in PM2.5 leads to a decline in test scores of 1.1 percent of a standard deviation. Lastly, we find that within schools the drop in test scores is concentrated among economically disadvantaged students. The effects of PM2.5 on student test scores are larger by a factor of ten for the poorest pupils. Similarly, the effects of SO2 are larger by a factor of six. We demonstrate that poor air quality disproportionately impacts the human capital accumulation of economically disadvantaged children.

This essay argues that the most crucial institution of any school system is its view of knowledge - from which virtually all other aspects of a school are derived: the content of its curricula, its pedagogical practices, and the incentives that motivate its members. To make this case, we outline the two main conflicting views of knowledge, the classical view and the postmodern social constructivist view. According to the classical view, the purpose of schooling is to give students objective knowledge and skills that they cannot acquire in any way other than through hierarchical instruction in well-defined disciplines. The social constructivist view rejects the existence of objective knowledge. This rejection translates to a preference for student-directed pedagogy, the mixing of instructional fields, and an emphasis on developing general critical thinking skills rather than on acquiring domain-specific knowledge. Using the history of education in Sweden as an example, our analysis suggests that the recent decline in educational quality in the Western democracies can be remedied by a paradigm shift in the governing view of knowledge toward the classical view.

It is proposed a broad two-tier income-contingent financing system for postsecondary students, designed for public and private providers and consisting of both income-contingent loans (ICLs) and income share agreements (ISAs), with repayments to be collected by the Federal Revenue System (FRS). Both students enrolled in tuition-free publicly run programmes and students enrolled in fee-paying programmes would be able to contract either ICLs or ISAs offered by both public and private financial institutions within the parameters defined by law and by regulatory instruments, without necessarily linking their ICLs and ISAs to the payment of tuition fees or other educational charges. In the case of students with no fees to pay (either because enrolled at tuition-free public institutions or attending fee-paying programmes totally or partially funded by the Government), the cost of the financial aid provided by the State would be added to the balances of the ICL or ISA accounts linked to their respective social security numbers. ICLs and ISAs contracted with duly certified financial institutions would also be accounted for in the balances of the individual accounts of students who resorted to such financing tools, and the law or other regulatory instrument must define debt ceilings. Repayments would be made in two different ways. Either debtors advance repayments directly to the organisation regulating the proposed system or postpone them and pay the debt through the tax system. This paper proposes legislative reforms to set the grounds to the new student funding system, which includes incorporating the tax-like contribution to the national tax system (as the way to involve the FRS in the repayment collection) as well as making the constitutionally mandatory free-of-charge provision in the public sector compatible with the collection of the new tax-like contribution from all graduates from public universities and VET institutions.

A concern in higher education policy is that students are taking longer to graduate. One possible reason for this observation is an increase in off-campus labor market participation among college students. Financial aid may play a role in the labor/study choice of college students-as college becomes more affordable, students may substitute away from work and toward increased study. I use data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) to exploit nonlinearity in the Pell Grant formula to estimate a regression kink and regression discontinuity designs. I find that conditional on receiving the minimum of $550, students reduce their labor supply by 0.4 hours per week, which translates to a 2.4 percent decrease in hours worked. Students who receive the average Pell Grant of $2,250 are 7.6 percentage points (or around 12 percent) less likely to work and, if working, supply 5.10 less hours per week, or around a 30.67 percent reduction. I find Pell Grants do increase academic achievement, implying that students substitute study time for work.

The extensive demand for blended learning programs imposes the problem of selecting the most appropriate instructional design from amongst a variety of alternatives that may be feasible for a particular program. The decision-making process should consider a number of qualitative factors such as the satisfaction of learning needs, educational efficiency, ease of implementation and total financial cost. In this paper, we propose that Bates’ (1995) e-learning instructional design model ACTIONS, which describes seven qualitative dimensions pertinent to selecting a design, can be used in conjunction with Data Envelopment Analysis to provide a distinct decision-making framework to aid administrators in determining which blended learning programs are the most effective. The first stage in the analysis is to explain which ACTIONS dimensions can be regarded as inputs and which can be treated as outputs for the sake of the decision process, with all seven dimensions being measurable by ordinal scores assessing the expected performance of alternative designs. In the second stage of analysis, we use Data Envelopment Analysis with ordinal data to obtain an overall expected performance index that is able to discriminate the designs most efficient and most suitable for implementation. The methodology is illustrated by an example. Discussion and Conclusions follow.

The aim of the study was to demonstrate the connection between education efficiency level and human development level. It was assumed that there is a connection between the value of Local Human Development Index (LHDI) and education efficiency established by means of the data envelopment analysis (DEA). The analysis covered data regarding 60 counties, recorded in 2013-2015. 30 counties with the highest Local Human Development Index (LHDI) and 30 counties with the lowest LHDI value were selected. The counties were selected based on a 2010 ranking of counties ordered according to LHDI values, published as a part of the National Report on Human Development. An additional analysis was conducted to evaluate the connection between Education Efficiency Index and the Wealth Index, Health Index and Education Index. The data on the counties used for the analyses was obtained from the Local Data Bank kept by the Main Statistical Office of Poland (GUS) and the Education Research Institute (IBE) of the Ministry of National Education. The efficiency analysis based on DEA-CRS was conducted with DEAFrontier software. The final stage of the analyses involved an ANOVA unidimensional analysis of variance for multiple factors, with emphasis on contrast analysis (simple contrast). The quality predictor applied in those analyses was the class of Efficiency Index. The analyses demonstrate that the highest Education Efficiency Index has been recorded in the counties that have the highest values of analysed variables characteristic of the largest counties. The identified dependency is also associated with the highest value of Local Human Development Index and the measures that make up LHDI.

Artículo de revista The Survey of Financial Competences shows that men are better at answering financial literacy questions than women. This article documents the magnitude of the gender gap in this area, reviews the hypotheses that, according to the academic literature, might explain the gender gap and quantifies the contribution of each hypothesis in the case of Spain. The findings suggest that a significant gender gap in financial literacy remains when considering the differences between men and women in terms of their socio-demographic characteristics, numeracy and reading comprehension skills, attitudes as measured by interest in finance, specialisation in household tasks and risk preferences. However, the gender gaps are significantly smaller in regions with more egalitarian financial arrangements for custody and marriage, suggesting that social norms may be important in explaining these disparities. Finally, the article advises treating any measurement of financial competences that merely adds up the correct responses to financial literacy questions with caution. The use of alternative measures of financial competences changes the size of the gap usually observed.

Whether allocating more resources improves learning outcomes for students in low-performing public schools remains an open debate. We focus on the effect of increased instructional time, which is theoretically ambiguous due to possible compensating changes in effort by students, teachers or parents. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we find that a reform extending the school day increases math test scores, with a large effect size relative to other interventions. It also improved reading, technical skills and socio-emotional competencies. Our results are partly explained by reductions in home production by students, specialization by teachers and investments in pedagogical assistance to teachers.

Die Universitäten in Deutschland sind unterfinanziert. Ob die Studierenden jedoch selber zur Finanzierung ihrer Hochschulbildung beitragen sollen, ist nach wie vor stark umstritten. Dieser Bericht weist anhand amtlicher Daten zu allen Studierenden in Deutschland nach, dass die Einführung von Studiengebühren in Deutschland in den Jahren 2006 und 2007 sowohl erwünschte als auch unerwünschte Auswirkungen hatte. So schlossen Studierende, die zum Zeitpunkt der Einführung von Studiengebühren bereits eingeschriebenen waren, ihr Studium schneller und häufiger ab, als es ohne Studiengebühren der Fall gewesen wäre. Allerdings schrieben sich aufgrund der Studiengebühren weniger StudienanfängerInnen neu ein. Ein Kompromiss, um die Vorteile von Studiengebühren zu nutzen und gleichzeitig unerwünschte Nebenwirkungen zu vermeiden, könnten nachgelagerte Studiengebühren sein: Die Studierenden würden die Gebühren erst dann zahlen müssen, wenn sie nach dem Studium ein bestimmtes Einkommen erzielen. Dies könnte zu höheren Abschlussquoten führen, ohne die Einschreibungsquote zu verringern., DIW Wochenbericht

In 2013 the responsibility for school governance and funding has been transferred from local governments to a central government agency in Hungary. The key objectives of this reform, as stated by policy makers, was to mitigate interjurisdictional inequalities in education. This paper explores whether the reform had an equalizing effect on education resources on the one hand, and student achievement on the other. First, we estimate elasticities of per-student school expenditures to average income in municipalities. The results reveal a substantial equalization of school resources: before the reform rich municipalities had spent significantly more on education than poor ones, while after the reform no difference in school spending can be detected. Second, we ask whether the equalization of resources had an effect on inequalities in student achievement. Student achievement is measured by test score in grade 6 and grade 8. The results show no equalization in this respect, suggesting that inequalities in school quality were hardly affected by the reform.

This paper analyzes higher education funding in Germany from a distributional perspective. For this, I first compare the quantitative importance of different funding instruments, from free tuition to subsidized health insurance for students. I show that free tuition is, by far, the most important instrument. Then, I take a lifetime perspective and assess how individuals of different expected lifetime incomes benefit from higher education funding. I distinguish between different fields of study as there are large differences in both the expected lifetime earnings of graduating from a specific field and the social cost of tuition associated with each field. Finally, I focus exclusively on the instrument of subsidized tuition and simulate the introduction of different tuition fee schemes with income-contingent loans. While the distributional effects would be sizable in absolute terms, I estimate that they would cause few individuals to change their educational decisions.

Fiscal externalities arise if subsidies to higher education raise future net fiscal revenues. We investigate in which countries fiscal externalities provide a justification for increasing subsidies to higher education. First, we show that the marginal fiscal recovery rate, i.e. the ratio of the change in total net fiscal revenues and the change in total subsidy costs caused by a small change in tuition subsidies, is the key statistic: if larger than one, then a small increase in subsidies is unambiguously desirable. We also show that the marginal fiscal recovery rate depends on three sufficient statistics: the elasticity of participation with respect to subsidies, the success probability of the marginal student, and the ratio of the net fiscal revenue gain and the subsidy cost of a degree in tertiary education. Second, we use the sufficient statistics formula to approximate the marginal fiscal recovery rate in twenty OECD countries. The average marginal fiscal recovery rate is equal to 0.89, meaning that, on average, 0.89 euro is recovered of an increase in subsidies with one euro. This average hides substantial heterogeneity between countries. In six countries (Australia, Israel, the Netherlands, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the marginal fiscal recovery rate is larger than one, implying that an increase in subsidies to higher education is unambiguously desirable in these countries. Third, to check the quality of our approximation, we also simulate the marginal fiscal recovery rate for one country (Belgium) on the basis of a more detailed model that allows for heterogeneity between students. Reassuringly, this simulation provides a roughly similar result than the approximation for this country. Moreover, the more detailed model allows for additional simulations (e.g., to compute a maximal tuition level) that are not feasible with the sufficient statistics formula.

I show how local supply changes create ripple effects in a national educational market. Admitting an applicant to a program will free up a slot to be filled at her next-best alternative. To investigate such substitution effects I re-engineer the centralized admission system of the Danish tertiary education sector and simulate equilibria under counterfactual supply. I estimate potential earnings with a regression discontinuity design and quantify market clearings in terms of earnings. On average, a change of 10 slots leads to 15 applicants moving and substitution effects explain 40 percent of the variation in earnings. Substitution externalities are generally positive but vary in sign and magnitude. I document a trade-off between earnings and inequality.

Artículo de revista La Encuesta de Competencias Financieras muestra que los hombres responden mejor que las mujeres a preguntas sobre conocimientos financieros. En este artículo se documenta la magnitud de las diferencias de género en este ámbito, se repasan las hipótesis que, según la literatura académica, podrían explicar la brecha de género y se cuantifica la contribución de cada hipótesis en el caso español. De los resultados se desprende que sigue existiendo una brecha de género notable en conocimientos financieros al considerar las diferencias entre hombres y mujeres en sus características sociodemográficas, habilidades numéricas o de comprensión lectora, y sus actitudes, medidas por el interés por las finanzas, la especialización de las tareas en el hogar y la aversión al riesgo. No obstante, las brechas de género son significativamente menores en las comunidades autónomas con regímenes económicos más igualitarios en términos de custodia y matrimonio, lo que sugiere que las normas sociales pueden ser importantes para explicar estas disparidades. Por último, el documento aporta una nota de cautela con respecto a la medición de las competencias financieras cuando se utiliza exclusivamente la suma de las respuestas correctas a las preguntas sobre conocimientos financieros. El uso de medidas alternativas de competencias financieras matiza el tamaño de la brecha habitualmente observada.

Equal educational opportunity is a core American value. Yet many children of low-income or minority racial or ethnic status attend public schools that are lower quality compared with those that white children or high-income children attend. And data indicate that, on average, low-income or minority children score lower on states' elementary-school accountability tests compared with higher-income children or white children. Such test-score gaps serve as evidence of unequal educational opportunity. This study uses information from metropolitan areas and from school districts to understand which factors are strongly related to the size of racial and socioeconomic test-score gaps. One key factor is the degree to which state aid to school districts is distributed progressively - that is, distributed disproportionately to districts with high fractions of students living in poverty-with progressive distributions associated with smaller test-score gaps in high-poverty metros or districts. Second, test-score gaps are larger in metropolitan areas and districts where poverty segregation is greater, that is, where, compared with white children or higher-income children, minority children or low-income children go to school with, or are in school districts with, more students from low-income families.

This paper exploits student-level administrative data on the population of Italian university students from 2006 to 2014 to analyze the effects of high performing (HP) male or female peers on individual academic performance, according to the gender of the student. The identification strategy is based on quasi-random variation in the exposure to HP peers across cohorts, within the same university and the same degree program. The impact of HP students, proxied by their high school final grade, is heterogeneous. We found that female HP peers have stronger positive effects than HP males, in particular with peers of the same gender. Moreover, there is evidence that the exposure to HP males can be even negative, especially for female students in competitive environments, such as the STEM fields, and for low ability students of both genders.

We quantify the effect of school voucher spending on initial earnings. We use administrative data on the monetary resources received by schools from a targeted voucher program implemented in Chile. We merge this dataset with education and labor market administrative records for the universe of students enrolled in the Chilean education system. We find that an increase of US$100 in the yearly expenditure of voucher resources per student raises initial earnings by 2.3%. However, we find that the positive effect of voucher spending only holds for private voucher schools that operate in local education markets with low enrollment concentration.

How have changes in the costs of enrolling full-time at public two- and four-year colleges affected student decisions about whether and where to enroll in college? Using local differences in the growth of tuition at community colleges and public four-year colleges we study the impact of public higher education costs on the post-secondary enrollment decisions of high school graduates over three decades. We model prospective students' decisions about whether to attend community college, a public four-year university in their state of residence, other colleges, or no college at all, as relative costs change. We identify enrollment impacts by instrumenting college costs using policy variation imposed by state appropriations and tuition caps. We estimate that in counties where local community college tuition doubled (about average for the study period), the likelihood of post-secondary enrollment fell by about 0.05, on a mean of about 0.80. In addition to reducing college enrollment overall, rising costs at community colleges diverted other students to four-year colleges. Rising relative costs of four-year public colleges similarly diverted some students toward community colleges but did not limit college attendance in the aggregate. We also find evidence of endogeneity in cost-setting at the institution level.

After being sued for inequity and inadequacy in school funding, many states have reformed their education aid policies. Using Connecticut as an example, this paper shows how to design a state education aid formula that can effectively address funding inequity and inadequacy while taking political feasibility into account. It first develops a measure of the gap between education cost and revenue capacity, both of which are estimated using school district characteristics that are outside the direct control of local officials at any given point in time. It then uses each district's cost-capacity gap to evaluate the state's existing education aid distribution. This paper shows that while larger-gap districts, on average, receive greater amounts of state aid per pupil under Connecticut's existing distributions, significant inequity and inadequacy remain. This paper proposes, as a potential solution, a gap-based formula that allocates state aid to close the cost-capacity gaps. The formula includes tools such as minimum and maximum levels of aid to increase its political appeal. The research method and the formula design that this paper presents are sufficiently general and flexible to be adapted easily and applied to other states.

Using data from 74 countries, we uncover important differences in the association between financial literacy and preferences by the level of economic development. We find that patience is only salient in wealthier countries, i.e. countries with their GDP per capita above the sample median. In such cases, countries with higher level of patience display higher levels of financial literacy. Importantly, this association is not driven by a multitude of institutional or cultural factors known to be related to financial literacy. In impoverished countries, we document a higher level of financial literacy in countries with higher levels of risk-taking but with lower levels of trust, positive reciprocity, and altruism. Countries' legal origin drives most of the association with risk-taking and about two fifths of the relationship with trust and positive reciprocity. At the same time, the country's religious composition drives the association between altruism and financial knowledge. Our findings underscore that financial education programs need to be tailored to the cultural aspect of group preferences and suggest what type of traits policies and programs ought to be reinforced in poorer countries.

We examine the role of financial aid in shaping the formation of human capital in economics. Specifically, we study the impact of a large merit-based scholarship for graduate studies in affecting individuals' occupational choices, career trajectories, and labor market outcomes of a generation of Italian economists with special focus on gender gaps and the role of social mobility. We construct a unique dataset that combines archival sources and includes microdata for the universe of applicants to the scholarship program and follow these individuals over their professional life. Our unique sample that focuses on the high end of the talent and ability distribution also allows us to analyze the characteristics of top graduates, a group which tends to be under-sampled in most surveys. We discuss five main results. First, women are less likely to be shortlisted for a scholarship as they tend to receive lower scores in the most subjective criteria used in the initial screening of candidates. Second, scholarship winners are much more likely to choose a research career and this effect is larger for women. Third, women who work in Italian universities tend to have less citations than men who work in Italy. However, the citation gender gap is smaller for candidates who received a scholarship. Fourth, women take longer to be promoted to the rank of full professor, even after controlling for academic productivity. Fifth, it is easier to become a high achiever for individuals from households with a lower socio-economic status if they reside in high social mobility provinces. However, high-achievers from lower socio-economic status households face an up-hill battle even in high social mobility provinces.

Merit requirements in need-based student aid may exacerbate inequality in higher education but at the same time improve efficiency of aid expenditure by increasing on-time graduation, for instance. Disentangling the effect of the two building blocks of student aid ("need" and "merit") is therefore of key interest to policy makers. In this paper, we seek to estimate the causal effect of tightening the academic requirements embodied in need-based student aid on short-term and long-term student academic performance. This is done leveraging a reform in an Italian region that increased by 40% (i.e. from 25 to 35 out of a maximum of 60) the number of credits to be earned in the first academic year to maintain aid eligibility. Using administrative data from an Italian public university mainly offering STEM degrees, this study reveals that tightening merit requirements had a statistically significant, positive effect on various dimensions of performance of the "average" aid recipient. However, an analysis of treatment heterogeneity unveils winners and losers from the policy: the positive effects are indeed concentrated among higher and medium-ability students, while lower-ability students receiving financial assistance are discouraged from continuing in their studies.

Gender pay gaps are commonly studied in populations with already completed educational careers. We focus on an earlier stage by investigating the gender pay gap among university students working alongside their studies. With data from five cohorts of a large-scale student survey from Germany, we use regression and wage decomposition techniques to describe gender pay gaps and potential explanations. We find that female students earn about 6% less on average than male students, which reduces to 4.1% when accounting for a rich set of explanatory variables. The largest explanatory factor is the type of jobs male and female students pursue.

Using data from a randomized control trial in Uruguay, we evaluate the impact of an economic and financial education program targeted to senior high-school students. The program is based on an innovative playful approach workshop about monetary policy and financial supervision. We find that the workshop has a positive and significant impact on student knowledge. Our results shed light on the importance of economic and financial education for the youth in developing countries.

We estimate the effects on workforce and location outcomes of the Kalamazoo Promise, a generous, place-based college scholarship. Drawing upon administrative unemployment insurance wage records merged with individual-level education data, we identify Promise effects by comparing eligible to ineligible graduates before and after the Promise's initiation. We supplement this quantitative analysis with surveys and interviews. Despite earlier research showing that the Kalamazoo Promise substantially increased degree attainment, we find little evidence that the program affected average earnings within 10 years of high school graduation. However, the Kalamazoo Promise may have increased the likelihood of eligible graduates having earnings, within Michigan, in the middle of the distribution. We discuss the possible role of job availability in understanding these patterns and the implications for free-tuition college programs as a workforce development tool.

Frequent non-completion in optional education can be e¢ cient if dropouts optimally exercise an option rationally foreseen by previous enrollment choices. This paper shows that in educational opportunities and groups of students where enrollment resolves more pronounced individual uncertainty both enrollment and dropout are higher, with ambiguous degree completion e¤ects, and educational outcomes are unambiguously better in expectation and on average.

Georgia offers two merit-based scholarships to in-state college students: HOPE Scholarships, which provide partial tuition support, and Zell Miller Scholarships, which provide full tuition support but with more stringent eligibility and retention conditions. Studies have examined retention of these scholarships but not other dynamics, including gaining HOPE Scholarships if students enter without them and follow-on transitions after students initially lose or gain a scholarship. This study uses 2013-2019 administrative data from 26 University System of Georgia institutions to jointly estimate multivariate competing-risk hazard models of a) losing an entering Zell Miller Scholarship, b) losing an entering HOPE Scholarship, c) gaining a HOPE Scholarship after matriculating without one, d) regaining a scholarship, and e) losing a non-entering scholarship. Many students change their scholarship status-event-history analyses predict that 25 percent of entering Zell Miller Scholarship students lose their scholarships by their 90th credit hour, 42 percent of entering HOPE Scholarship students lose their scholarship by their 90th credit hour, and 27 percent of students who enter without a scholarship gain them. Students of color, students with economic disadvantages, and men are more likely to lose scholarships and less likely to gain scholarships. These dynamics compound inequities in initial scholarship receipt.

Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and leveraging a student fixed effects design, we explore how the massive scale-up of a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes. Program expansion modestly benefited students (through higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates) attending public schools closer to more pre-program private school options. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well. Local and district-wide private school competition are both independently related to student outcomes.

Workforce development in the US today is spread across higher education institutions (primarily public 2-year and for-profit colleges), labor market institutions and workplaces, with public funding from a range of sources. But outcomes for students and workers are weaker than they could be, especially among disadvantaged students and displaced workers; funding for workforce programs is insufficient and not always effective. I propose the following changes: 1) Reforms and additional funding in the Higher Education Act for postsecondary occupational training for disadvantaged students; 2) Modest taxes on worker displacement along with new funding for retraining; and 3) A permanent version of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grants, to fund partnerships between community colleges, workforce institutions and states. Together, these actions would improve credential attainment and employment outcomes among the disadvantaged and those at risk of being displaced.

This paper uses new administrative data with detailed borrower information and lengthy repayment histories from the Canada Student Loans Program (CSLP) to mea- sure rates of return on undergraduate student loans. We document substantial heterogeneity in returns based on information available at the time loans were disbursed, including province of residence, field of study, and institution of attendance. Field of study is a particularly important determinant of rates of return, explaining 22% of the variation in predicted returns across borrowers. We explore the implications of this variation for CSLP cross-subsidization across borrowers and potential risk-based loan limits. Given the variation in ex ante predicted returns across borrowers, using all available information at the time of loan disbursement, we study the implications of potential cream-skimming of high-return borrowers by private lenders.