Financial Student Aid and Enrollment in Higher Education: New Evidence from Germany*

Means‐tested student aid might affect enrollment in higher education. To derive the potential influence of student aid, we use a tax‐benefit microsimulation model. The effect is a non‐linear function of parental income, with variation as a result of bracket creeping and various reforms. Therefore, the effect of student aid on enrollment can be separated from the effects of income and other family characteristics. Using the German Socio‐Economic Panel, we find a small but significant positive effect, similar in size to the effects reported in previous studies for European countries but smaller than in the US.     

Transforming Malaysia's Higher Education: Policies and Progress

Malaysia's higher education sector has a substantial number and diverse types of public and private providers, which have contributed toward improving access. Over time, with improved access, there are increasing policy efforts directed toward improving the quality of higher education to meet the desired human capital needed for advancing economic development. This paper assesses three key areas that have been undertaken to improve the quality of higher education, their measurements, achievements, outstanding challenges, and ensuing implications on future policy directions. The key performance indicators used for monitoring quality improvements show that some targets have been achieved. A review of the approach used to measure performance and a consolidation of the sector are needed for further quality improvement.     

College Quality and Wages in the United States

Abstract. We estimate the effects of the quality of the college a student attends on their later earnings using data from a cohort of US college students from the late 1970s and early 1980s. We rely on a linear selection on observables identification strategy, which is justified in our context by a very rich set of conditioning variables. We find economically important earnings effects of college quality for men and women, as well as effects on educational attainment, spousal earnings and other demographic variables. These effects remain roughly constant over time and result primarily from effects on wages, rather than from effects on hours or labor force participation. We find that, over the lower part of the range of college quality, increases in college quality (which entail higher expenditures per student) pass a simple social cost–benefit test.     

Intergenerational Mobility in the United States and Great Britain: A Comparative Study of Parent–Child Pathways

We build on cross‐national research to examine the relationships underlying estimates of relative intergenerational mobility in the United States and Great Britain using harmonized longitudinal data and focusing on men. We examine several pathways by which parental status is related to offspring status, including education, labor market attachment, occupation, marital status, and health, and perform several sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of our results. We decompose differences between the two nations into that part attributable to the strength of the relationship between parental income and the child's characteristics and the labor market return to those child characteristics. We find that the relationships underlying these intergenerational linkages differ in systematic ways between the two nations. In the United States, primarily because of the higher returns to education and skills, the pathway through offspring education is relatively more important than it is in Great Britain; by contrast, in Great Britain the occupation pathway forms the primary channel of intergenerational persistence.     

Japan's Higher Education Policies under Global Challenges

Over the past 20 years, Japan's higher education policy has been strongly influenced by national policies for achieving world-class excellence as a tool for economic and social development. However, Japan's universities, especially the top universities, have faced difficulties in maintaining an international presence, both in terms of academic excellence and the development of globally competitive human resources. This paper reflects on how national policies, especially economic and fiscal policies, have intervened in higher education since the beginning of the 21st century, and then investigates the impact of these policies and discusses the future perspective on Japan's higher education given the current global challenges.     

2002～2005年间我国不同地区高校科技创新效率比较研究

利用SPSS13.0对2002～2005年间我国各省、市、自治区高校科技创新活动进行了聚类分析,并采用DEA的CCR模型对这4年中我国各省、市、自治区高校科技创新过程中经费支出,以及人员投入的效率问题进行了比较研究,结果发现有24个地区DEA有效,6个地区非DEA有效。最后给出了非DEA有效地区的改进方向。     

粤港澳高等教育一体化研究

高等教育一体化不仅是粤港澳地区社会、经济发展的要求,也是三地高等教育现代化、国际化发展的要求;粤港澳的高等教育只有走一体化之路,才能充分发挥高等教育对粤港澳经济一体化的巨大推动作用。文章从粤港澳高等教育一体化与经济一体化的关系入手,从粤港澳高等教育的可持续发展出发,分析了粤港澳高等教育一体化之重要性、必要性和可行性及其困难与问题,并提出了实现一体化的对策与建议,并指出三地只有进一步挖掘和利用《珠江三角洲地区改革发展规划纲要》的政策优势和平台作用,积极推进粤港澳高等教育一体化进程,才能为三地在世界高等教育领域谋得更大的话语权。     

Enrollment expansion and quality differentiation across higher education systems

While the impact of a higher college wage premium on enrollment expansion is well understood, the link between university quality differentiation and student outcomes in this context has received less attention. To address this issue, we model different higher education systems. Academic standards decline in a differentiated, U.S.-type education system - as a low-quality segment emerges - but also in a system in which a uniform standard is politically determined, as in most European countries, since the interests of marginal students matter for the chosen standard. In the absence of full information about graduates' skills, employers put more weight on university reputation than on individual human capital signal. Thus, higher differentiation can decrease the effort and skill of medium-ability students. Obtaining the preferred academic standard is particularly important for high-and low-ability students, hence the trend toward more unequal societies raises political support for strongly differentiated systems.     

The College Wage Premium and the Expansion of Higher Education in the UK*

This paper reports estimates of the UK “college premium” for young graduates across successive cohorts from large cross‐section datasets for the UK pooled from 1994 to 2006—a period when the higher education participation rate increased dramatically. The growth in relative labour demand suggests that graduate supply considerably outstripped demand which ought to imply a fall in the premium. We find no significant fall for men and even a large, but insignificant, rise for women. Quantile regression results reveal a fall in the premium only for men in the bottom quartile of the distribution of unobserved skills.     

Unemployment and labor force participation in the United States

This paper uses historical data from the United States to investigate the relationship between unemployment and labor force participation. Cointegration analysis supports a long-run relationship between these two variables, which leads us to question the empirical relevance of the unemployment invariance hypothesis for the United States.     

中国高等特殊教育生师比问题的研究

高等特殊教育是高等教育的一部分,其教育对象为健全人和残疾人。合理的生师比是该教育体系的成功实施的重要因素。对健全人实施的特殊教育师资培养项目的生师比可以参照国家规定的普通高校的生师比,对残疾人实施的高等教育项目的生师比目前没有国家标准,是中国残疾人高等教育教师配备的一个空白。试图通过对现有各级各类学校的现有政策的研究分析,提出适合残疾人高等教育的生师比。     

Emerging and Near Future Challenges of Higher Education in East Asia

Continuing the advances made in the later parts of the 20th century, East Asian economies and their higher education systems rapidly evolved in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Most East Asian countries are categorized as advanced economies with developed societies; however, issues such as aging populations, debt levels, and decreasing salary premiums for education are becoming increasingly apparent. Many of the higher education systems have reached or will soon reach a peak of massification, and a new set of challenges may emerge. In addition to ongoing challenges, for example, the need to foster further equity and internationalization, this study identifies three emergent or near future challenges for policymakers and higher education institution strategists to reflect on: the need to consolidate the system in view of decreasing enrollments; the need to reform higher education institutions to cope with potentially decreasing resources and the emergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and automation; and the need to realign academic research systems to ensure that the knowledge produced is more sustainable, collaborative, and meaningful.     

河南省高等教育与经济协调发展研究

高等教育与经济发展的良性互动,是实现可持续发展的重要保证.一般来讲,二者应呈现正相关的关系,但是也有超前或滞后的情况.河南省作为一个经济相对落后但又快速发展的省份,二者是怎样的情形,是否有自身的特点.本文借助于统计方法,通过对河南省高等教育发展与经济互动的实证分析,得出河南省高等教育与经济基本协调发展,但省内各地市高等教育发展存在较大差异的结论,并对如何提高河南高等教育与经济的适应性和协调型发展提出策略.     

Enrolment in Higher Education and Changes in Income Inequality

Using a cross‐section of countries, this paper empirically examines whether greater enrolment rates in higher education are associated with increases or decreases in subsequent income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient. It finds a negative association between the two, suggesting that countries with larger enrolment rates saw their income inequality decrease relative to other countries. These findings are robust to the inclusion of several control variables and to limiting the sample to non‐OECD countries.     

PARENTS’ EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND,SUBJECTS “GOOD‐AT” IN SCHOOL AND INCOME: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY*

We analyze the effects of studying mathematics and of parents’ academic profile on the annual labour income of their children in later life. Data was obtained from graduates of departments of economics at major private universities in Japan. They show that respondents who are good at mathematics (and English) have a higher average income, and that the more educated the parents, the more children tend to excel in mathematics.     

福建省高等教育对经济增长的贡献率研究

以丹尼森教育量简化指数法为基础,以1996—2007年相关统计数据测算了福建省高等教育对经济增长的贡献率。结果显示,虽然福建省高等教育已有一定发展,但相较于周边省份仍有所滞后,应进一步重视高等教育发展。     

Sectoral Productivity in the United States: Recent Developments and the Role of IT

Abstract. This paper introduces new estimates of recent productivity developments in the United States, using an appropriate theoretical framework for aggregating industry multi-factor productivity (MFP) to sectors and the total economy. Our work sheds light on the sources of the continued strong performance of US productivity since 2000. We find that the major sectoral players in the late 1990s pickup were not contributors to the more recent surge in productivity. Rather, striking gains in MFP in the finance and business service sector, a resurgence in MFP growth in the industrial sector, and an end to drops elsewhere more than account for the aggregate acceleration in productivity in recent years. Further, some evidence is found for a link between IT intensity and the recent productivity acceleration.     

Research Productivity in Business Economics: An Investigation of Austrian,German and Swiss Universities

Abstract. We draw on a new and comprehensive dataset that collects the research output of business economists employed by Austrian, German and Swiss universities. We compute research rankings of departments and identify the leading departments in selected subdisciplines. Moreover, we investigate how institutional design and individual characteristics affect research productivity and draw some conclusions for the training of junior scientists.