This paper examines the impact of a reform aimed at expediting graduation times in Italian universities by reducing the number of exams students must pass to obtain a fixed number of credits. Using event-study estimates that leverage the reform's staggered implementation, we find that this policy change led to an increase in on-time graduation…

The paper studies a unique education reform that decreased the length of secondary-level vocational education from 4 to 3 years, reducing the time spent on general subjects while keeping the time spent on vocational training. We use a difference-in-difference strategy by comparing reformed schools with early adopters before and after the reform.…

There is increasing attention on the retention of international students, with many stakeholders desiring to keep international students for long-term economic growth. This study examined the factors affecting international students choosing to stay in Finland 5 years after initial enrollment, with particular focus on the role graduation plays in…

Contrary to the overall tendency to increase student participation in the financing of higher education, Estonia abolished student tuition fees in 2013. We study the effects of this reform on the students' access to and progress in higher education, concentrating mostly on the changes in probabilities of rural and remote students being admitted…

This study examines whether providing students with information on their future study success will influence their higher education enrollment decision and lower first-year dropout as a consequence. A randomized field experiment is conducted among 313 law and social science applicants at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The main results suggest…

This dissertation focuses on microeconomic topics in the fields of public, labor and education. Particularly, this dissertation evaluates state policies in higher education and develops a global measure for job quality. Chapter 1 studies how state merit aid programs affect undergraduate degrees earned in Science, Technology, Engineering and…

This paper examines the effect of the introduction of an academic dismissal (AD) policy (i.e. an intervention, which can lead to compulsory student withdrawal) on student dropout, student graduation rates and satisfaction with the study program. Using a difference-in-differences type of estimator, we compare programs that introduced an AD policy…

Increasing postsecondary enrolments, reducing university drop-outs, while, simultaneously, boosting graduation rates, is a worldwide dilemma, currently challenging any university and any educational system. One of the most pressing issues facing universities, however, is the number of students, who fail to graduate. The literature survey on gender…

In this paper, we estimate the effect of receiving financial aid for a cohort of students who enrolled at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) in the year 2007/2008, through a propensity score matching approach. Using administrative data about these students for four years, the impact of the financial aid on several dimensions of academic performance was…

This dissertation studies the effects of foreign presence on the performance of domestic institutions and economic agents. We identify three types of foreign presence: international students, inward foreign investment, and exporting activities. The first chapter investigates the impacts of international students on the graduation performance of…

This paper analyses admission decisions when students from different high school tracks apply for admission to university programmes. I derive a criterion that is optimal in the sense that it maximizes the graduation rates of the university programmes. The paper contains an empirical analysis that documents the relevance of theory and illustrates…

What are the socioeconomic implications of the time allocation decisions made by low-income adolescents? The way adolescents allocate their time between schooling, labor and leisure has important implications for their education attainment, college aspirations, job opportunities and future earnings. This study focuses on adolescents and young…

We investigate graduate school outcomes for students who entered economics Ph.D. programs in Fall 2002. Students in Top-15 ranked programs and those with higher verbal and quantitative GRE scores are less likely to have dropped out, but no more likely to have graduated. Those with undergraduate degrees from Top-60 U.S. liberal arts colleges and…

In this paper, absorbing markov chains are used to analyse the flows of higher degree by research candidates (doctoral and master) within an Australian faculty of business. The candidates are analysed according to whether they are full time or part time. The need for such analysis stemmed from what appeared to be a rather poor completion rate (as…

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. Breaking the inter-generational transmission of poverty requires far-reaching actions in the education sector. Widespread poverty affects both students' performance and their availability to attend…