Most economic investigations of access to education treat an investment in college or university as if it were a financial investment offering a particular expected rate of return. Since the average measured rates of return are quite favourable, other factors such as lack of information,...

Despite tremendous recent interest in the subject of student debt by both researchers and policy makers, little is known about how the distribution of college graduate debt has been evolving and what factors can explain it. We use National Postsecondary Student Aid Study data from 1990 through...

This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. I use administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10 percent of American public university students, to systematically...

This paper examines how financial aid reform based on postsecondary institutional performance impacts student choice. Federal and state regulations often reflect concerns about the private, for-profit sector's poor employment outcomes and high loan defaults, despite the sector's possible...

This paper provides an overview of the higher education sector in Canada, so it can serve as a comparison to that in Australia. It seeks to identify stresses and challenges to this sector in Canada. The study also seeks to offer possible lessons for the direction of higher education policy in...

When students fund their education through loans, changes in student borrowing and tuition are interlinked. Higher tuition costs raise loan demand, but loan supply also affects equilibrium tuition costs - for example, by relaxing students' funding constraints. To resolve this simultaneity...

This volume was prepared by Benedikt Siegler while working at the Center for the Economics of Education of the Ifo Institute. It was completed in June 2014 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich (LMU) in November 2014. The thesis includes...

Im Land Mecklenburg-Vorpommern finden sich zwei staatliche (Voll-)Universitäten, drei staatliche Fachhochschulen und eine staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Theater. Im Vergleich zu den Einnahmen des Landes steigen die Finanzmittel der Hochschulen überproportional. Im Rahmen des...