Can information provision increase postgraduate enrollment of students with low socioeconomic background?

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. C. Katharina Spieß
• Subject Area: Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: from 2017 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 366556429

The choice to study at university is influenced by the socio-economic status (SES) background of students, holding constant ability and other observable factors. In Germany, there is a gap of 21 percentage points based on SES background of students regarding the decision to study for a Bachelors degree. This gap widens by another 11 to 17 percentage points at the transition from undergraduate (Bachelors) to postgraduate (Masters) studies. The exact size of the gap remains debated and might partly be explained by differences between low- and high-SES background students, which are usually unobserved to the researcher. Nevertheless, increasing the share of low-SES background students at university is an important objective of German higher education policy (and worldwide). This study will implement and evaluate a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to study how the provision of information about costs and benefits of postgraduate studies affect study-decisions of low-SES background students. The focus on postgraduate studies is warranted for three reasons. First, the existing literature almost exclusively studies the decision to enroll in undergraduate studies. Second, almost every student in the post-Bologna world has to make this decision of whether to pursue a Masters degree. Finally, very recent research on college wage returns that splits the college-group into undergraduate and postgraduate degrees documents that wage returns to postgraduate studies are particularly high. Socio-economic differences in decisions to seek Masters degrees will, therefore, directly affect societal income inequalities. This project will examine if information provision about the costs and future returns of postgraduate studies affects intentions and enrollment, in particular for low-SES background students.We will implement a RCT because this is the gold standard in applied research. The reasons to believe, a priori, that the provision of information could make a difference, especially for low-SES background students, emerge both from an extended human capital approach as well as from behavioral economic models of individual behavior. The focus of this project is on providing the reduced form effect of information provision on postgraduate study intentions and enrolment of low-SES background students. Precisely, to generate a causal estimate that is beyond any doubt, we chose to deliver the treatment as RCT. In addition, we will also estimate results against a different (and much larger) control group that we draw from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) through a matching procedure. This allows us to partially address potential weaknesses of RCTs with respect to external validity in our setting, while maintaining the advantages of a RCTs with respect to internal validity.The project will be hosted at DIW Belin, which has access to a population of low-SES undergraduate students who will decide in 2017 whether or not to pursue postgraduate studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Felix Weinhardt, Ph.D.