This article is a commentary on the seven articles in this special issue of EJTE on teacher quality from international perspectives. In the article, Marilyn Cochran-Smith points to differences as well as common themes and details across the articles in the issue. The article discusses the emergence of teacher quality as a global concern, including…

Interest in higher education institutions (HEIs) as instruments for development has increased in recent years. The main objective of this paper is to address the contribution of HEIs to development through their missions, models, and challenges. With this purpose, we perform a historical analysis and characterise higher-education systems through…

This paper investigates achievement gaps between low and high socioeconomic students in 19 high-income countries. On average, math scores of students with indicators of high socioeconomic status (SES) are over one standard deviation above those with low SES indicators. The paper estimates the extent to which these achievement gaps can be…

While higher education is regarded a high priority for economic development in many countries, public budgets often fall short to support desired levels of expansion in higher education. This leads to cost-sharing: students and their families are required to contribute more to the costs of higher education. This paper explores worldwide trends to…

This study examines the economic returns to schooling acquired in the country of origin and the country of destination. It uses large-scale survey data on Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and Antillean immigrants in the Netherlands, which contain direct measures of pre- and post migration schooling. It is studied whether the returns to origin-country…

In this article we examine gender differences in income expectations of students in higher education. We found quite large gender differences. Men and women differ significantly in the income they expect to earn at the top of their career. We examined how much personality traits contribute to explain gender differences in income expectations, and…

This paper analyses the relation between two important aspects of human capital: education and health. The contribution of our paper to the literature is three-fold: some further tests for causality in the relation between education and health are provided; it is tested whether results are affected by scale of reference bias and unobserved…

Sectoral levelling funds are an arrangement aimed at alleviating a well-known theoretical problem of underinvestment in worker training because of free-rider behaviour of firms. In the Netherlands, collective agreements require firms to participate in such funds in a number of sectors. Using a comprehensive dataset of Dutch firms, we attempt to…

Many arguments in favour of school voucher programs are based upon libertarian free agency principles. Viewed at the organizational level, allowing persons to exercise choice in education would seem to offer incentives for all educational organizations within that framework to improve overall product quality and thus more effectively obtain the…