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Abstract: In this paper we study the impact of cognitive ability on college major choices using an administrative data set for full-time students enrolled in four-year business and economics programs offered by the largest Slovenian university. In contrast to existing studies, we are able to distinguish between general ability, measured with high school GPA, and major-specific ability, measured with grades achieved in major-specific courses. We show that students with higher general ability are more likely to enroll in Economics majors, while higher major specific ability (e.g. higher grade in Accounting) increases the likelihood of choosing that major (Accounting). We also find that both genders are more responsive to measured major-specific ability in majors that are traditionally more popular among them (e.g. Business Informatics for males). These results suggest that policy makers aiming to change the structure of the labor supply should attempt to change the major-specific abilities of students. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between economic and cultural variables and the decision to attend university. We find that a student is more likely to aspire to attend university if: they have the Internet at home; are encouraged by their teachers; or attend a Catholic or independent school rather than a public school. Our analysis also suggests that the level of parent support is important (with a marginal effect larger than that for teacher encouragement) and this level of support may be linked to the parent''s level of educational attainment. Importantly, we find that including cultural and economic variables in a model of students’ aspirations significantly increases the power to predict when a student does not aspire to attend university. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes whether there exists a causal relationship between parental employment and children''s educational attainment. We address potential endogeneity problems due to (i) selection of parents in the labor market by estimating a model on sibling differences and (ii) reverse causality by focusing on parents’ employment when children are aged 0–3. We use data from the German Socioeconomic Panel that provide information on household income, parental employment, and time spent with child care. Our approach disentangles income and time effects of parental employment. Overall, we find little support that parental employment affects children''s educational attainment. Controlling for household income, we can rule out that having a mother who works one hour more per week lowers the probability of high secondary track attendance by more than 0.1%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper adds to the sparse literature on the consequences of education–occupation mismatches. It examines the income penalty for field of education–occupation mismatches for men and women with higher education degrees in Sweden and reveals that the penalty for such mismatches is large for both men and women. For mismatched men the income penalty is about twice as large as that found for US men, whereas for women the penalty is of about the same size as for US women. Controlling for cognitive ability further establishes that the income penalty is not caused by a sorting by ability, at least for Swedish men. The income penalty for men decreases with work experience, which is an indication that education-specific skills and work experience are substitutes to some extent. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the effects of a higher education accountability system in Brazil. For each discipline, colleges were assigned a grade that depended on the scores of their students on the ENC, an annual mandatory exam. These grades were then disclosed to the public and colleges were rewarded or penalized based on them. I find that the ENC had a positive effect on the education and the proportion of full-time faculty and that it increased the number of vacancies offered, applicants and enrollments. Colleges were affected differently depending on grades, ownership and academic organization, changing the distribution of students among them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: An ongoing controversy in the literature on the economics of higher education centers on whether the success of a school’s athletic program affects alumni donations. This paper uses a unique data set to investigate this issue. The data contain detailed information about donations made by alumni of a selective research university as well as a variety of their economic and demographic characteristics. One important question is how to characterize the success of an athletic program. We focus not only on the performance of the most visible teams, football and basketball, but also on the success of the team on which he or she played as an undergraduate. One of our key findings is that the impact of athletic success on donations differs for men and women. When a male graduate’s former team wins its conference championship, his donations for general purposes increase by about 7% and his donations to the athletic program increase by about the same percentage. Football and basketball records generally have small and statistically insignificant effects; in some specifications, a winning basketball season reduces donations. For women there is no statistically discernible effect of a former team’s success on current giving; as is the case for men, the impacts of football and basketball, while statistically significant in some specifications, are not important in magnitude. Another novel result is that for males, varsity athletes whose teams were successful when they were undergraduates subsequently make larger donations to the athletic program. For example, if a male alumnus’s team won its conference championship during his senior year, his subsequent giving to the athletic program is about 8% a year higher, ceteris paribus. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Private institutions of higher education are highly dependent on alumni support to cover operating expenses, fund endowments and fuel large capital campaigns. For example, in 2004, alumni at private liberal arts colleges generated nearly 43% of total voluntary support and funded 21.5% of total institutional expenditures. This paper uses 15 years of detailed data on alumni donations to a private liberal arts college to explore a full range of potential determinants of giving. Results suggest that wealthy alumni who live in states that allow charitable tax deductions are more generous than otherwise similar alumni in states without such subsidies. Alumni contributions also increase in years when the college has achieved greater athletic prestige but fall when academic prestige rises. Furthermore, recent alumni are more influenced by institutional prestige than older graduates. With regard to other determinants, females tend to be more generous, as do alumni living in wealthier neighborhoods within 250 miles of the college. Alumni who have close alumni relatives tend to give more as do alumni who participated in campus activities during their college years. Undergraduate major and occupational sector are also strong predictors of giving behavior. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the cost of the increased provision of higher education courses within further education colleges in England. We believe this to be the first attempt to fit a cost function specifically to the further education sector. Cost functions for a sample of 96 colleges over a 2-year period, from 2000 to 2002, are fitted using a panel data methodology as well as stochastic frontier analysis. We compare and contrast our findings with a sample of 959 US colleges. Our findings indicate that most further education colleges are able to benefit from economies of scale. Results from both methodologies suggest the presence of product-specific economies of scale, substantial ray economies of scale and indicate that higher education classroom-based courses, such as business studies, as well as vocational courses display substantial economies of scope. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper investigates the main determinants of applying to in-state public colleges and universities. I use data from over 500,000 SAT and ACT test takers to examine the roles of college quality and tuition in the college selection decision. I take advantage of the interstate variation in quality and tuition at the public flagship universities in each state to examine these influences empirically. The main finding is that student willingness to pay for quality is quite large. a one standard deviation increase across states in college quality at the flagship school is estimated to have an equal but opposite effect on student applications as a 70–80% increase in in-state tuition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper describes the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), Australia''s income-contingent charge mechanism, and analyses its impact on the social composition of university participation. We consider university participation data from three cohorts of young Australians. The first completed their schooling prior to HECS, the second following its introduction and the third after the scheme was amended substantially. We find that the social composition of participants was different in 1999 from that of 1988: the distribution was more equal. That outcome reflected strong relative growth in participation in the middle of the wealth distribution. Other aspects of university participation also changed: participation grew more strongly among females than males. We find no evidence that participation fell among ‘marginal decision makers’—those who, while at school, did not intend to study at university. We conclude that HECS did not discourage university participation in general or among individuals from low wealth groups. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Cost-sharing, or the shift in at least part of the higher educational cost burden from governments (or taxpayers) to parents and students, is a worldwide trend manifested in the introduction of (or in sharp increases in) tuition fees, user charges for lodging and food, and in the diminution of student grants. The phenomenon is seen even in Europe, which still remains the last bastion of generally “free” higher education, as well as in countries that were once Marxist and that are finding loopholes to retain the legal semblance of free higher education while becoming increasingly dependent on tuition revenue for the financial survival of their institutions. This paper examines the rationales for cost-sharing as well as the continuing ideological, political, and technical opposition to it, even in the face of extreme austerity and the virtual inevitability of higher educational revenue diversification, including some forms of cost-sharing, in most countries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the effects of cost, quality and macroeconomic factors on the demand for higher education (represented by the share of admitted freshmen choosing to enroll) at a group of selective liberal arts colleges over the period from 1988 to 1998. Students are segregated by their financial-aid status with different demand equations estimated for each. Students who have no financial need or did not apply for aid are found to have a tuition elasticity close to unity, implying that a 1% increase in tuition will lead to about a 1% decrease in enrollment yield. The analysis of aid recipients suggests that both relative tuition and financial-aid levels play a significant role in determining the enrollment yield of a college. Tuition and room and board levels negatively affect the enrollment yield of this group of students, while grants and loans increase the likelihood of enrollment of admitted students. The evidence on the effects of school quality variables and macroeconomic factors is weak. There is some evidence that a higher ranking in the US News and World Report college guide increases yield, but specific quality measures such as SAT scores have little statistical significance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper uses a policy change involving statewide school district refinancing in Kansas during the early 1990s to identify the relationship between per-pupil expenditure and the probability that a student will progress to higher education. Kansas’s school district refinancing was intended to equalize per-pupil expenditure conditional on a measure of cost developed by the state. This equalization process resulted in a change in spending that, although not completely exogenous, is understood well enough that an unbiased estimate of the effect of spending on students’ post-secondary destinations can be made. Since additional years of education are known to increase lifetime earnings, a simple cost-benefit analysis of a hypothetical spending increase is considered. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

With participation in higher education amongst young people rising, governments around the world have been faced with increasing pressure on their finances, giving rise to the need to operate universities with a higher degree of efficiency. In this paper, non-parametric techniques are used to estimate technical and scale efficiency of individual Australian universities. Various measures of output and inputs are used. The results show that regardless of the output–input mix, Australian universities as a whole recorded high levels of efficiency relative to each other. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]