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...

We investigate the choice of quality, or academic content, in higher education in a two-sector model. Individuals are differentiated according to their cost of acquiring human capital. A higher academic quality increases productivity upon training, but is also associated with higher cost of...

Past studies have found that parental background has a considerable impact on educational decisions. Our knowledge is, however, still limited regarding educational transitions later in life, such as into tertiary education. Is parental background a predominant factor in this relatively late...

College admissions officers face a rapidly changing policy environment where court decisions have limited the use of affirmative action. At the same time, there is mounting evidence that commonly used signals of college readiness, such as the SAT/ACTs, are subject to race and socioeconomic bias....

Access to higher education begins with a student's decision whether and where to apply to college. This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in college application behavior of high school graduates, using two recent graduation cohorts from Texas. We estimate racial and ethnic differences...

In recent years, many countries have experienced a significant expansion of higher education enrolment. There is a particular interest among policy makers for further growth in STEM subjects, which could lead to larger classes in these fields. This study estimates the effect of class size on...

This paper provides the first causal evidence on the impact of college advisor quality on student outcomes. To do so, we exploit a unique setting where students are randomly assigned to faculty advisors during their first year of college. We find that higher advisor value-added (VA)...

We find robust evidence that cohorts of graduates who enter college during worse economic times earn higher average wages than those who enter during better times. This difference is not explained by differences in economic conditions at the time of college graduation, changes in field of study...

Detecting racial discrimination using observational data is challenging because of the presence of unobservables that may be correlated with race. Using data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard case, we estimate discrimination in a setting where this concern is mitigated. Namely, we show that...

Higher education is considered as an engine for development and growth in the knowledge society, because of its benefits to boost research, knowledge and technological innovation. This paper examines the relation between innovation, higher education and economic growth during the 1996-2014...