In this dissertation, I present an examination of the economics of education through three chapters. In the first paper, I study the overrepresentation of elite university graduates in senior positions in public administration. Using rich administrative data from Chile, I employ a stacked fuzzy regression discontinuity design to estimate the…

This study aimed at developing a valid and reliable measurement tool to determine school image at high schools and investigating the discrimination level of the scale among the students from different high school types in Turkey. Two studies were conducted to (a) develop a valid and reliable measurement tool and (b) to examine the discrimination…

The development of education to improve poverty in the region has become an essential direction of the world's poverty alleviation work. In the poverty alleviation by education work in China, educators who are on the front line of poverty are determined by education and nurturing their wisdom, leading countless children from families out of…

In this paper, we analyse social inequalities along the horizontal dimension of education in Italy. More precisely, we focus on the role of family background in completing specific fields of study at both secondary and tertiary levels of education. To mitigate the limitations of the traditional sequential model, we construct a typology of…

Grades are the fundamental currency of our educational system; they signal academic achievement and noncognitive skills to parents, employers, postsecondary gatekeepers, and students themselves. Grade inflation compromises the signaling value of grades and undermines their capacity to achieve the functions for which they are intended. We challenge…

In Leonard Koos's book, "The Junior-College Movement", he described the establishment of a junior college in an American public school district as the "culmination of the local school system", alluding to the prestige associated with having a junior college in a community. The best-known example of this arrangement was in…

This paper considers school factors that contribute to a successful transition from high school to first-year university Physics courses at the University of British Columbia by employing a two-level hierarchical model. It is assumed that there is a relationship between student performance and the high school they graduated from. It is shown that…

Race shapes many aspects of students' high school experiences that are relevant to the college admissions process. We examine the racially-specific effects of high school course of study on college selectivity. Using NELS 1988-1994, we test how race and track interactively predict the prestige of the first post-secondary institution attended. We…

As college administrators, they take great pains to ensure that students admitted to their campuses have the intellect, motivation, and maturity to succeed. Similarly, they attempt to gather information about the character and integrity of the students they invite to enroll, to safeguard the reputation and well-being of their institutions. But…

The present study tests the assumption that the stable vs. unstable character of the structural relationship between groups influences the type of bias to which differentiation may lead, and affects the likelihood of identification with one's ingroup. Study I was conducted in Canada with university students and Study 2 in two French high schools;…