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...

This paper examines the effects of mineral extraction on human capital formation in Colombia, a country rich in natural resources but struggling with low college attendance, high youth unemployment, and high informality in the labor market. Leveraging the allocation of natural resources as a...

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...