Social background directly impacts educational choice and attainment, but also influences choice and attainment indirectly by affecting school performance. Boudon (1974) described this relationship as primary (indirect) and secondary (direct) effects of social stratification. Based on this...

We try to explain the differences between the performance (in both reading and math) of 8430 15-year-old daughters and 8526 15-year-old sons in 17 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development destination countries across Europe and Oceania with the PISA 2009 data from 45 origin...

Tracking students in secondary school could increase the effect of parental background PB on student performance, especially if parents can influence the track choice. This influence can be either direct or indirect, and either purposefully or not. Little is known about these indirect effects of...

In this paper we develop and test a new set of measures of skill mismatches, based on data on skill levels and skill use in the domains of literacy and numeracy from the PIAAC project. The measures we develop represent the extent of skill use relative to ones own skill level. We test the...

This paper measures determinants of individual academic achievements. In addition to an extensive list of individual characteristics, skills obtained during study and socio-economic background factors, many dimensions of selectivity into academic study subjects are shown to drive individual...

In this paper, we reflect on the skills higher education graduates are expected to have in todays economy and the role of higher education in equipping graduates with these skills. First, we identify 6 trends which form the basis of the changing role of graduates in economic life. These trends...

We analyze the relation between time preferences, study effort, and academic performance among first-year Business and Economics students. Time preferences are measured by stated preferences for an immediate payment over larger delayed payments. Data on study efforts are derived from an...

In this study we elicit employers preferences for a variety of CV attributes and types of skills when recruiting university graduates. Using two discrete choice experiments, we simulate the two common steps of the graduate recruitment process 1 the selection of suitable candidates for job...

Field of study choice has far-reaching implications for individuals enrolling in university. Field of study choice is strongly linked to the subject matter graduates will specialize in, the kind of work environment they will be working in, and the returns to their skills they can expect once...

In elementary school, girls typically outperform boys in languages and boys typically outperform girls in math. The determinants of these differences have remained largely unexplored. Using rich data from Dutch elementary schools, we decompose the differences in achievement into gender...