Modelling students' behaviour in relation to tuition fees is a complex task since students' "talent" is not common knowledge. Students observe a private noisy signal of their abilities, while university receives noisy information based on the quantitative and qualitative data provided by university applicants. In this article, we add the…

In this paper, we use the 2000-2008 waves of the German Socioeconomic Panel to examine overeducation transitions. The results are based on a first-order Markov model that allows us to account for both the initial conditions problem and potential endogeneity in attrition. We found that overeducation dynamics, especially the probability of entering…

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, although many cost function studies have been done in developed countries, there has been no such study for the developing countries such as Vietnam. This paper will make the first attempt at conducting a cost function analysis for Vietnam. Second, it also demonstrates how the results of the cost…

The benefits of deferring the payment of higher-education costs are increasingly acknowledged as a way to overcome student-borrowing constraints. Since higher education is a risky investment and students are generally risk averse, the repayment arrangements proposed in the literature frequently include some insurance. In a competitive environment,…

Education policy-makers and practitioners want to know which policies and practices can best achieve their goals. But research that can inform evidence-based policy often requires complex methods to distinguish causation from accidental association. Avoiding econometric jargon and technical detail, this paper explains the main idea and intuition…

This paper documents the experience of incentive-based reforms in the secondary Islamic/madrasa education sector in Bangladesh within the context of the broader debate over modernization of religious school systems in South Asia. Key features of the reform are changes of the curriculum and policy regarding admission of female students. In return…

Concentration on school attainment goals without close attention to school quality has hurt developing countries. Recent evidence shows that individual incomes, the distribution of income, and economic growth rates are all closely related to the cognitive skills of the population. While direct evidence from developing countries is thin, the…

The number of colleges and universities in most developing countries has increased drastically over the past decades. The quality variation of these institutions is an alarming concern. Quality assurance programs are proposed and implemented. This paper evaluates the effects of quality assurance on the demand for college education, study abroad,…

In this paper we examine the influence of gender, sibling characteristics and birth order on the schooling attainment of school-age Egyptian children. We use multivariate analysis to simultaneously examine three different schooling outcomes of a child having "no schooling", "less than the desired level of schooling", and an "age-appropriate level…

This paper offers an explanation of the use of tenure-track contracts in academia. It argues that, because the results of academic research cannot be sold, a professor's profitability depends on the market value of the instruction he or she provides. But because that value depends directly on the extent of his or her observable research…

This paper considers the effects of a branch campus on the individual college education decision and the economic welfare of a developing country. There are a single domestic college and a single branch campus established by a foreign university. A graduate from the branch campus has an opportunity to emigrate and work abroad, earning a higher…

This paper develops a simple static model of an imperfectly competitive university operating under government-imposed constraints on the ability to raise tuition fees and increase enrollments. The model has particular applicability to Canadian universities. Assuming an average cost pricing rule, rules for adequate government subsidies (operating…

Universities around the United States are seeking ways to attract students to their institutions. One possible strategy is to compete for out-of-state students. Since an early 1970s examination of the determinants of student migration by Tuckman, there have been several subsequent studies that have either further developed the methodology of the…

This paper considers the role of scholarships in study abroad programs. Suppose that a university attempts to maximize the average ability of its student body by encouraging students to participate in study abroad programs. It is shown that the ideal scholarship vehicle to accomplish this is a fixed-amount award independent of a student's ability…

Demographic change in industrial countries will influence educational spending in potentially two ways. On the one hand, the decline in the number of school-age children should alleviate the financial pressure. On the other hand, the theoretical/empirical literature has established that the concomitantly increasing proportion of elderly in the…