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In this paper, we exploit a rich longitudinal data set to explore the forces that, during high school, shape the development of aspirations to attend university and achieve academic success. We then investigate how these aspirations, along with grades and other variables, impact educational outcomes such as going to university and graduating. It turns out that parental expectations and peer factors have direct and indirect effects on educational outcomes through their impact on both grades and aspirations. Policy measures that enlighten parents about the value of education may positively modify educational outcomes.

To create their rankings, university-ranking agencies usually combine multiple performance measures into a composite index. However, both rankings and index scores are sensitive to the weights assigned to performance measures. This paper uses a stochastic dominance efficiency methodology to obtain two extreme, case-weighting vectors using the Academic Ranking of Worldwide Universities (ARWU) and Times Higher Education (THE) data, both of which lead to the highest and lowest index outcomes for the majority of universities. We find that both composite scores and rankings are very sensitive to weight variations, especially for middle- and low-ranked universities.

The collapse of communism led to highly skewed sex ratios in Albania, which had a long patriarchal tradition before the advent of communism. While the use of sex-selective abortions in the region is well-known, little is known about other forms taken by revealed son preference, such as differential stopping behaviour and birth spacing. Pooling data from the Demographic Health Surveys in 2008–2009 and 2017–2018, we find evidence of a higher proportion of boys being born at the last birth, indicating that parents practice differential stopping behaviour. Using a logit model, we also show that in sonless households parents shorten the birth intervals significantly, endangering mothers' and children's health. We conclude that differential stopping behaviour and short birth spacing are prevalent in all regions and across the socio-economic spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of the minimum wage on individuals' postsecondary schooling decisions. Using Canadian longitudinal data, we explore 136 minimum-wage amendments and find three novel results. First, the minimum wage affects both the quantity and type of human capital acquired by students. A 10% increase in the minimum wage increases community-college enrollment by 6.2% but reduces university enrollment by 6.5%. Second, high minimum wages widen the university participation gap between individuals with different levels of parental education. Finally, minimum-wage hikes encourage workers who recently separated from their jobs to return to postsecondary education as mature students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how expectations and post-secondary education (PSE) path disruption decisions are affected by a learning process that students experience once enrolled in a PSE program. An unexpected change in grades, between high school and first year PSE program, serves as an informative signal on how well their academic performance and preferences align with the academic requirements and difficulty of the program that they enrolled. I find that learning about the fit affects students' immediate PSE decisions about dropping out, switching program of study and their expectations about the current educational level. The effects are heterogeneous by parental education.

In this article we develop a methodology for the joint value added analysis of multiple outcomes that takes into account the inherent correlation between them. This is especially crucial in the analysis of higher education institutions. We use a unique Colombian database on universities, which contains scores in five domains tested in a standardized exit examination that is compulsory in order to graduate. We develop a new estimation procedure that accommodates any number of outcomes. Another novelty of our method is related to the structure of the random effect covariance matrix. Effects of the same school can be correlated and this correlation is allowed to vary among schools.

A strong positive correlation between the educational attainment of parents and their children is well documented. Determining whether this relationship is due to nature (selection) or nurture (causal factors) is both a challenge and an important policy issue. We use the Vietnam era draft lottery and educational exemptions as a "natural experiment" to address this issue. Substantially more men attended university during this war, creating a cohort of fathers many members of which would not normally have enrolled in tertiary education (TE). Using US Current Population Survey (CPS) and Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data on the father's and his children's TE involvement, we find that, for this war cohort, the intergenerational transmission leading their children to enrollment in TE is at least as high (CPS) or even higher (PSID) than that of control cohorts. In the context of university attendance in the US, these findings suggest that nurture plays an important additional role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]