Using administrative data, I track the path of all the secondary school graduates in Colombia from 2002 to 2012 that enter higher education and/or the formal labor market (5.4 million graduates). I compare graduates within the same secondary school and cohorts to estimate the premium of higher...

Abstract The new millennium brought with it a new challenge. Students reaching higher education were not only greater in number, they were also less prepared than their predecessors. This caused a sharp deterioration in the quality of the entire higher education system, which in turn affected...