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This article examines the labor market payoffs to different types of postsecondary education, including field and institution of study. Instrumental variables (IV) estimation of the payoff to choosing one type of education compared to another is made particularly challenging by individuals choosing between several types of education. Not only does identification require one instrument per alternative, but it is also necessary to deal with the issue that individuals who choose the same education may have different next-best alternatives. We address these difficulties using rich administrative data for Norway’s postsecondary education system. A centralized admission process creates credible instruments from discontinuities that effectively randomize applicants near unpredictable admission cutoffs into different institutions and fields of study. The admission process also provides information on preferred and next-best alternatives from strategy-proof measures of individuals’ ranking of institutions and fields. The results from our IV approach may be summarized with three broad conclusions. First, different fields of study have substantially different labor market payoffs, even after accounting for institution and peer quality. Second, the effect on earnings from attending a more selective institution tends to be relatively small compared to payoffs to field of study. Third, the estimated payoffs to field of study are consistent with individuals choosing fields in which they have a comparative advantage. Comparing our estimates to those obtained from other approaches highlights the importance of using instruments to correct for selection bias and information on individuals’ ranking of institutions and fields to measure their preferred and next-best alternatives.

Studies typically find large variation in labor market outcomes not only between educational levels, but also among individuals with a higher education. However, the importance of different types of horizontal divisions in higher education is mostly treated in separate literatures. In this paper, we use multilevel models and an outcome-based approach to investigate the relative importance of institution (college), department, and field of study in the Norwegian labor market. We find that the effects of field of study on wages are generally strong. The overall effects of institution are also quite large, but they emerge to a considerable extent at the level of departments; the effects of institution over and above the effects of department are small. We also show that the effects of horizontal divisions are greater at the graduate than at the undergraduate level, and that the effects of horizontal divisions increase over individuals’ work careers.

We explore how college reputation affects the \"big sort,\" the process by which students choose colleges and find their first jobs. We incorporate a simple definition of college reputation—graduates' mean admission scores—into a competitive labor market model. This generates a clear prediction: if employers use reputation to set wages, then the introduction of a new measure of individual skill will decrease the return to reputation. Administrative data and a natural experiment from the country of Colombia confirm this. Finally, we show that college reputation is positively correlated with graduates' earnings growth, suggesting that reputation matters beyond signaling individual skill.

A burgeoning body of the literature has studied the migration of university-bound students and university graduates in developed countries, but little research has been conducted on this issue in China. Using microdata from the 2005 1 % population sample survey, this paper examines, for the first time, the migration of university entrants and graduates in China by describing their migration patterns and modeling their choices of destination location. The migration patterns show that recent university graduates are highly concentrated in three eastern provincial units, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangdong, and that the destinations of university entrants tend to be more dispersed geographically. The results from conditional logit models indicate that highly educated youths, in particular those who study in a regular university, have a strong tendency to stay in the same province after graduation. The migration of university entrants is determined mainly by regional differences in university enrollment, while the distribution of national key universities, economic opportunities, and the cost of living plays a less important role in their location choices. The migration of university graduates is driven primarily by regional differences in wage levels. Comparing with vocational college entrants, regular university entrants are attracted to regions with more national key universities. Comparing with vocational college graduates, regular university graduates are attracted to regions with higher wage levels. Our findings suggest that increasing labor market returns is a more effective approach than investing in higher education to curb brain drain in China’s less developed regions.

We use administrative data from Texas to estimate how graduating from a state flagship or a community college relative to a nonflagship university affects the distribution of earnings. We control for the selection of students across sectors using a rich set of observable ability and background characteristics and find evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the returns to quality. Returns increase with earnings among UT–Austin graduates but decline among Texas A&M graduates. For community colleges, returns are negative for lower earners but go to zero for higher earners. Our estimates also point to differences in the distribution of returns by race/ethnicity.

\"- One in ten students at the master's or equivalent level is an international student in OECD countries, rising to one in four at the doctoral level.; - Almost 60% of international doctoral students in OECD countries are enrolled in science, engineering or agriculture.; - The United States hosts 38% of international students enrolled in a programme at the doctoral level in OECD countries. Luxembourg and Switzerland host the largest proportion of international students, who make up more than half of their total doctoral students.; - International master's and doctoral students tend to choose to study in countries investing substantial resources in research and development in tertiary educational institutions.; - Of all international students enrolled at the master's or doctoral level across OECD countries, the majority (53%) are from Asia, and 23% are from China alone.\" (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku). Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Sekundäranalyse; Querschnitt. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 2012 bis 2013.

In the examination of the determinants of educational choices, little attention has been devoted to the relationship between family income and the quality of higher education. Using the 1979 and 1997 waves of the NLSY, we show that family income significantly affects the quality of higher education, especially for high-ability individuals.While the impact of family income on college quality is significant in both samples, it has declined considerably over time for high-ability students. Overall, the trends we observe are highly consistent with increases in tuition across the quality spectrum, coupled with more generous merit-based aid at high-quality institutions.

\"Mit der Bildungsexpansion haben sich die sozialen Ungleichheiten im deutschen Bildungssystem deutlich verringert. D a sich im Zuge dieser Veränderungen ein Teil der sozialen Selektivitäten auf den Hochschulbereich verschoben hat und zudem deutliche Unterschiede in der Art der Bildungsbeteiligung bestehen, stellt sich die Frage, inwieweit sich neue Muster sozialer Ungleichheit ausgebildet haben. D er vorliegende Beitrag konzentriert sich hierbei auf die herkunftsspezifischen Unterschiede in der Entscheidung an eine ausländische Hochschule zu wechseln und die Prozesse und Mechanismen die diesen Unterschieden zugrunde liegen. Auf Basis der H IS-Studienberechtigtenbefragungen wird das Ausmaß und die Entwicklung herkunftsspezifischer Unterschiede bestimmt und anhand nicht-linearer Dekompositionsmodelle gezeigt, auf welche Ursachen und Prozesse diese Unterschiede zurückzuführen sind. Im Ergebnis finden wir sowohl in der Absicht als auch in der Entscheidung, ein Auslandsstudium aufzunehmen, bemerkenswerte herkunftsspezifische Unterschiede. Die geringere Auslandsmobilität der Studierenden aus bildungsfernen Familien lässt sich hierbei auf die schlechteren Schulleistungen und geringeren Fremdsprachenkenntnisse, die höheren örtlichen Bindungen und auf Unterschiede in den institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen zurückführen. Im Zeitverlauf nehmen diese Unterschiede zwischen 1990 und 2005 eher zu als ab.\" Die Untersuchung enthält quantitative Daten. Forschungsmethode: empirisch-quantitativ; empirisch; Längsschnitt. Die Untersuchung bezieht sich auf den Zeitraum 1990 bis 2005. (Autorenreferat, IAB-Doku).

\"A multinomial logit model is estimated to investigate the destination of students one-year after graduating from high school. The appropriate specification of the choice set available to high school leavers is as follows: private four-year college, public four-year college, private two-year college, public two-year college, employed and unemployed. The authors test for several possible combinations of these choices and find that these pooled models are all rejected in favour of the full model. The transition from high school to college and to work is more complex than previous studies have recognised.\" (author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)).