There is a well established socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment, despite much effort in recent decades to address this inequality. This study evaluates a university access program that provides financial, academic and social support to low socioeconomic status (SES) students using a...

Understanding how policy can affect university participation is important for understanding how governments can promote human capital accumulation. In this paper, we estimate the separate impacts of tuition fees and maintenance grants on the decision to enter university in the UK. We use Labour...

This paper examines the impact of month of birth on national achievement test scores in England whilst children are in school, and on subsequent further and higher education participation. Using geographical variation in school admissions policies, we are able to split this difference into an...

<p>There is a well established socioeconomic gradient in educational attainment in all countries: young people from a low socioeconomic status (SES) will, on average, receive less education and do less well at school. While this is true virtually everywhere, this SES gradient is noticeably higher...</p>

There are large socio-economic gaps in higher education participation. But returns to education in the UK derive largely from the attainment of qualifications rather than years of study, and additionally vary by institution, subject and degree class for graduates. This paper provides new...

Education is often regarded as a route to social mobility. For this to be the case, however, the link between family background and adult outcomes must be broken (or at least reduced) once we take account of an individual's education history. This paper focuses on individuals who have completed...

There have been many studies of the impact of higher education (HE) on the wages and earnings of graduates. However, for working women, the variation in wages only explains 30% of the variance in net family income. To understand the overall impact of HE on the living standards of female...

We study students' motives for educational attainment in a unique survey of 885 secondary school students in the UK. As expected, students who perceive the monetary returns to education to be higher are more likely to intend to continue in full-time education. However, the main driver is the...

This paper makes use of newly linked English administrative data to better understand the determinants of higher education participation amongst individuals from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. It is unique in being able to follow two cohorts of students in England - those who took...