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…

Recent years have seen an unprecedented growth and geographic dispersion in international student mobility. In this paper, we empirically test the predictions of two competing theoretical models underpinning the determinants of student mobility -- the human capital model and the migration model -- across traditional and emerging destinations. Our…

This study developed statistical models to forecast international undergraduate student enrollment at a Midwest university. The authors constructed a Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model with input variables to estimate future enrollment. This model reflected enrollment patterns by semester through highlighting seasonality.…

Chapter 1 investigates asks the question how do financial frictions affect the type of human capital investments that students make in college? To study this question, I build a novel dataset covering more than 700,000 U.S. students, merging commencement records with address histories, credit bureau records, and professional resumes. I document…

The initial vision for intelligent tutoring systems involved powerful, multi-faceted systems that would leverage rich models of students and pedagogies to create complex learning interactions. But the intelligent tutoring systems used at scale today are much simpler. In this article, I present hypotheses on the factors underlying this development,…

Nordic welfare states have been very successful at reducing poverty and inequality among their citizens. However, the presence of a strong social safety net in these countries has not solved the problem of "socioeconomic exclusion", manifesting in such outcomes as chronic unemployment and welfare dependency. In an effort to understand…

The purpose of this study was to explore opportunity costs of postsecondary education in the U.S. in the past three decades (1975-2005), as a measure to support investment decisions at national levels and as experienced by individuals deciding on pursuing further education. Based on human capital theory and inspired by a set of studies aiming at…

This article documents a model for forecasting earnings of the nontraditional student based on macrolevel changes in educational attainment within the workforce using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. It also presents a theoretical case that illustrates the value of improving one's educational attainment level in order to sustain an annualized…

This study evaluates the empirical merits of a multilevel model of English language proficiency among immigrants. The model represents a synthesis of Blau's theory of intergroup relations and the human capital model. Hypotheses derived from the model were tested using multilevel ordinal logistic analysis with individual and aggregate data from…

Using NLSY data, we examine the long-term effects of youth unemployment on later labor market outcomes. Involuntary unemployment may yield suboptimal investments in human capital in the short run. A theoretical model of dynamic human capital investment predicts a rational "catch-up" response. Using semiparametric techniques to control for the…

This paper examines the effect of teenagers' outlooks--specified as their locus of control--on educational attainment and labor market outcomes. I replicate the study of Coleman and DeLeire (2003) and test the predictions of their theoretical model using a different data set--National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The findings fail to…

This paper examines the relationship between the incentives to work and to invest in human capital through education in a lifecycle optimizing model. These incentives are shown to be mutually reinforcing in a simple stylized model. This theoretical prediction is investigated empirically using three large micro datasets covering a broad range of…