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Author: Sara A. Muehlenbein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages :
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Education matters. As attending college, and more recently pursing a graduate education, become more common endeavours, research on how students transition though the secondary and post-secondary educational systems is both vital and informative for students and policy-makers. My research centers around these transitions in and out of educational institutions and examines how specialized pathways through the educational system impact education. Here, I present three empirical investigations that speak to the efficacy of these specialized pathways to educate our youth, aid in transitions in and out of post-secondary institutions, and support graduates in their pursuit of advanced degrees. The first essay evaluates the efficacy of competitive magnet schools, one of many specialized K-12 pathways offered by public schools. The second essay analyzes the impact of a major federal financial aid policy change on the specialized paths of graduate students pursing a master's degree and their borrowing decisions. The third essay characterizes specialized pathways related to major choice in the post-secondary transition from undergraduate studies to graduate studies.
Author: Sara A. Muehlenbein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Education matters. As attending college, and more recently pursing a graduate education, become more common endeavours, research on how students transition though the secondary and post-secondary educational systems is both vital and informative for students and policy-makers. My research centers around these transitions in and out of educational institutions and examines how specialized pathways through the educational system impact education. Here, I present three empirical investigations that speak to the efficacy of these specialized pathways to educate our youth, aid in transitions in and out of post-secondary institutions, and support graduates in their pursuit of advanced degrees. The first essay evaluates the efficacy of competitive magnet schools, one of many specialized K-12 pathways offered by public schools. The second essay analyzes the impact of a major federal financial aid policy change on the specialized paths of graduate students pursing a master's degree and their borrowing decisions. The third essay characterizes specialized pathways related to major choice in the post-secondary transition from undergraduate studies to graduate studies.
Author: Jonathan I. Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Abstract: This dissertation consists of three essays on the economics of education. The first essay examines how students choose to which colleges to apply and how their choices affect college enrollment rates. Using an instrumental variables approach, I find that applying to one additional college increases a student's probability of college enrollment by 6%. I then estimate a structural model in which students choose where to apply in order to maximize their expected utility. To overcome computational issues associated with students having a large choice set, I use an inequality estimation method. I use the estimates from the structural model to evaluate several policies designed to encourage more applications and consequently increase enrollment rates. If at-risk of not enrolling students apply to one additional college of their choice, enrollment rates rise by almost the maximum achievable from a marginal application and by more than achieved by mandating an additional "safety school" or an additional "reach school" application. The second essay examines how U.S. News and World Report college rankings and their visibility affect application decisions. The effects are identified using changes in how the magazine ranks colleges and how it presents the rankings. I find that a one-rank improvement leads to a 0.9 percentage point increase in the number of applications to that college. However, rankings have no effect on application decisions when colleges are listed alphabetically, even though students can calculate rank from the data provided. This provides evidence that salience of information matters even for investments as large as college. The final essay investigates the impact of feedback on performance. It uses a novel setting and sample: grade school students competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. I find that feedback on their own performance increases errors more among girls than among boys. I also find that spellers' performances are affected by the performance of their immediate predecessors and not by more informative aggregate feedback, but this effect does not differ by gender. Thus gender differences in response to feedback depend on the type and source of feedback.
Author: Douglas N. Harris
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charter schools
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Author: Ben Safety Ost
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 129
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This dissertation is a compilation of three essays. The first essay uses longitudinal administrative data on teachers to investigate the relative productivity benefits of acquiring general versus task-specific human capital. Within a school, elementary teachers frequently change grade assignments and I exploit the resulting variation in grade-specific tenure to separately identify the effect of general teaching experience and specific experience. Using a value-added model that controls for teacher fixed effects, I find that both general experience and grade-specific experience improve teacher performance. In addition to providing evidence that the productivity returns to human capital can be sensitive to seemingly small changes in task requirements, this study furthers our understanding of how teachers improve with experience. The second essay uses longitudinal administrative data from a large selective research university to analyze the role of peers and grades in determining major persistence in the life and physical sciences. In the physical sciences, analyses using within-course, across-time variation show that ex-ante measures of peer quality in a student's introductory courses has a lasting impact on the probability of persisting in the major. This peer effect exhibits important non-linearities such that weak students benefit from exposure to stronger peers while strong students are not dragged down by weaker peers. In both the physical and life sciences, I find evidence that students are "pulled away" by their high grades in non-science courses and "pushed out" by their low grades in their major field. The final essay examines the effect of undergraduate course letter grades on future course selection and major choice. Using a Regression-Discontinuity design, I exploit the fact that the probability of earning a particular letter grade jumps discontinuously around letter grade cutoffs. This variation in letter grades allows me to isolate the impact of letter grades on major choice and course selection. I collect original numerical scores for 65 introductory courses across 6 fields and merge this with administrative data including student-level characteristics and transcripts. Since grading cutoffs exist throughout the distribution of scores, I am able to estimate local treatment effects at a variety of localities to examine the distribution of treatment effects. Contrary to the findings of the previous literature, I find no evidence that students respond to their letter grades in terms of course or major choices.
Author: Ricardo Meilman Lomaz Cohn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 179
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This thesis is composed of three essays on economics of education. The first chapter is co-authored with Ciro Avitabile and Jesse Cunha and investigates the medium-term impact of early-life welfare transfers on children's learning. It studies children who were exposed to the randomized controlled trial of the Mexico's Food Support Program (Programa de Apoyo Alimentario), in which households were assigned to receive cash, in-kind food transfers, or nothing (a control). The findings show that in-kind transfers did not impact test scores, while cash transfers led to a significant and meaningful decrease in test scores. An analysis of the mechanisms driving these results reveals that both transfers led to an increase in child labor, which is likely detrimental to learning. In-kind food transfers, however, induced a greater consumption of several key micronutrients that are vital for brain development, which likely attenuated the negative impacts of child labor on learning. The second chapter, jointly with Jane Friesen and Simon Woodcock, studies sorting, peer effects and school effectiveness under a universal voucher program. Using student-level longitudinal data for the population of students enrolled in private and public schools, we estimate a model of test scores that includes student effects, school effects and peer effects. Our results provide both the first estimates of the contribution of peer ability to private school effectiveness and a novel set of estimates of the effect of private school cream-skimming on the achievement of public school students under a mature voucher program. We find evidence of substantial sorting that contributes meaningfully to achievement at private schools via peer effects but has little effect on the average outcomes of those left behind in public schools. The third chapter investigates the effect of a policy-induced increase in public school competition on private school enrollment and budget outcomes. I exploit a natural experiment created by the introduction of an open enrollment policy that expanded public school choice opportunities and increased competitive pressure on private schools. Using a new data set constructed from mandatory nonprofit information returns and school enrollment records, I find that an increase in public school competition modestly reduces private school enrollment. Catholic school enrollment is most responsive to increased public school choice, whereas other private schools such as Christian and other faith schools experience no reduction in enrollment. The negative enrollment effects are concentrated among high school age students. I find no evidence that private schools respond to this increased public school choice by adjusting their revenue and spending choices.
Author: Pierre Edward Mouganie
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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This dissertation introduces three essays on the short and long run consequences of educational choices. In the first essay "Conscription and the Returns to Education: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity" we use a regression discontinuity design to first identify the effect of peacetime conscription on education and labor market outcomes. Results indicate that conscription eligibility induces a significant increase in years of education, which is consistent with conscription avoidance behavior. However, this increased education does not result in either an increase in graduation rates, or in employment and wages. Additional evidence shows conscription has no direct effect on earnings, suggesting that the returns to education induced by this policy was zero. In the second essay "Quality of Higher Education and Earnings: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from the French Baccalaureate", we use a regression discontinuity design to examine the returns to quality of postsecondary education. We compare the outcomes of students who marginally pass and fail the first round exams of the French Baccalaureate, a degree that students must earn to graduate from secondary school. Marginally passing increases the likelihood of attending a higher quality university and a STEM major. Threshold crossing also increases earnings by 13.6 percent at the age of 27 to 29. After ruling out other channels that could affect earnings, we conclude that increased access to higher quality postsecondary education leads to a significant earnings premium. In the third and final essay "Better or Best? High School Quality and Academic Performance" we look at the effects of attending a higher quality high school on the academic performance and college outcomes of young Chinese students. Specifically, in our analysis, we draw a distinction between going to a better school, regardless of tier, and going to a top-tier school. We find that college entrance exam test score gains and improved college outcomes are only realized for individuals attending the most elite set of high schools. These results are mainly driven by males as we find no significant effects on academic performance for females. Finally, we provide evidence suggesting that these academic gains are mostly due to variation in teacher quality. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/155600.
Author: Stephen V. Cameron
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Author: Isaac McFarlin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 147
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Author: Hiren Nisar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Author: Tianheng Wang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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