Using longitudinal data of college graduates in Colombia, we estimate labor market returns to postsecondary degrees and to various skills--including literacy, numeracy, foreign language, and field-specific skills. Graduates of academic programs and schools of higher reputation obtain higher earnings relative to vocational public programs. A one…

Reverse transfer associate degrees are credentials retroactively awarded to current bachelor's degree seekers, combining four-year credits with credits previously earned at a community college. Using administrative data from Tennessee, we use a difference-in-difference design to compare students before and after receipt of a reverse transfer…

Reverse transfer associate degrees are credentials retroactively awarded to current bachelor's degree seekers, combining four-year credits with credits previously earned at a community college. Using administrative data from Tennessee, we use a difference-in-difference design to compare students before and after receipt of a reverse transfer…

This research evaluates the role of urban universities in economic growth. The study employed inherently rich data from IPEDS to create a panel dataset aggregated at the county level for 1065 colleges and universities in the Middle Atlantic region of the US. Using linear regression analysis, this study found that increases in expenditure per…

I study the effect of higher education on lifecycle earnings and focus on three ways in which education may help drive earnings: the effect of higher education on one's skills, the effect on one's ability to accumulate new skills in the future, and the relationship between education and one's likelihood of unemployment. In the first chapter, I…

We explore the impact of excess credits, defined as additional credit hours accumulated by students beyond the required number of hours, on labor market outcomes. We consider whether additional credits have any impact on the labor market outcomes of job mismatch and income. Data are taken from the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) study, a…

Policy discussions in the United States on the link between college majors and earnings have under-appreciated the role of cognitive skills. This study uses the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, a unique data set that contains information on individual cognitive skills, college majors and earnings to investigate the…

This paper analyzes whether and how attending an internship during tertiary education affects income. We address endogeneity with an IV approach that exploits information regarding whether the internship was a mandatory component of the study. We further address selection into programs with mandatory internship by using the share of mandatory…

This article revisits the Mincer earnings function and presents comparable estimates of the average monetary returns associated with an additional year of education across different regions worldwide. In contrast to the traditional Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method commonly employed in the literature, this study applied a cutting-edge approach…

The authors examined cocoa farmers' participation in Farmer Business Schools (FBS) in Ghana, impacts of livelihood outcomes (human, physical, financial, and social capitals) on participation, and implications of participation on productivity and per capita expenditure. We used cross-sectional data from 150 cocoa farmers. Data was analyzed with…

This study aimed to evaluate the long-term dynamic effects of expenditures on higher education in OECD countries and the higher education enrollment rate on human capital and per capita income. The study was designed to achieve realistic results by evaluating both higher education expenditures and enrollment rates. It was determined that in…

21st century research, to date, indicates that the private and social returns from higher education are substantial. The subtext of both human capital theory and the signaling model is a belief that higher earnings are an indicator of "earned merit"; an assumption called into question, challenging the meritocratic basis for earnings…

Over the past four decades, income inequality grew significantly between workers with bachelor's degrees and those with high school diplomas (often called "unskilled"). Rather than being unskilled, we argue that these workers are STARs because they are skilled through alternative routes--namely their work experience. Using the skill…

In this study, using a database of higher education student surveys, we analyse the motivations behind paid work through cluster analysis and reveal which variables influence them. We hypothesise that working while studying is also an investment in human capital. We research to what extent students are motivated to work alongside their studies by…

Purpose: This study examined the economic and social impact of Malaysian universities on their communities from stakeholders' perspectives. It analysed whether university stakeholders' spending, human capital (HC) and knowledge exploration (KE) will impact aggregate income (AI), quality of life (QOL) and business growth (BG) in surrounding…