This paper studies how college major choices shape earnings and fertility outcomes. Using administrative data that link students' preferences, random assignment to majors, and post-college outcomes, we estimate the causal pecuniary and nonpecuniary returns to different fields of study. We...

Opportunity costs are central to economic decision-making but often neglected. In a pre-registered experiment with 2,222 German university freshmen, one treatment provides salary information; another additionally frames it as the opportunity cost of delayed graduation. Only the opportunity cost...

At a time when European science and innovation policy is seeking to better support research talent in navigating increasingly diverse post-PhD careers, we suggest that skill requirements vary substantially across employment sectors. We examine PhD holders' self-perceived transferable skills to...

Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study examines how perceived educational support influences entrepreneurial intentions among university students in India and the People's Republic of China (PRC), through the mediating effects of entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms,...

The purpose of the study is to investigate the gap between entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial action among business administration students with the aim of understanding why many who develop entrepreneurial intentions do not ultimately take action. A quantitative methodology was...

This study explores how digital and traditional marketing tools influence higher education students' career decision-making, satisfaction, and career commitment during students' educational trajectories in Iraq's rapidly expanding university sector. Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods...

Digital transformation is rapidly reshaping economies and labor markets worldwide, creating new opportunities while demanding a workforce equipped with relevant digital competencies. For Zambia, a country with one of the youngest populations in the world—this transformation presents both...

Exceptional talent accounts for a disproportionate share of innovation, yet many individuals with exceptional ability may never realize their potential. Whether expanding access to advanced training generates learning gains remains an open question. We study this using a randomized controlled...

International and Irish studies have indicated negative trends in the mental health and wellbeing of young people over recent years. Indeed, the most recent wave of the Health Behaviour of School-Aged Children study shows that Ireland ranked 24 out of 36 countries on overall adolescent mental...

This study examines the relationship between conflict events, conflict-related fatalities, and entrepreneurial intentions in Iraq, one of the most war-affected countries over the past four decades and a context largely overlooked in the entrepreneurship literature. By combining regional-level...

Die Studie zeichnet ein konsistentes Bild der langfristigen Entwicklungen im deutschen Bildungs- und Qualifikationssystem und ordnet diese in internationale Vergleichsrahmen ein. Im Bereich der Qualifikationsstruktur bestätigen sich bekannte Muster: Deutschland bleibt durch einen besonders...

Students' university experience includes both academic and non-academic outcomes, which are shaped by the educational environment in which students interact. We refer to this environment as university climate and measure it along three dimensions: conformity to masculinity-related attitudes and...

Female students are less likely to be identified as intellectually gifted than male students when the identification process follows a two-stage procedure. We posit and quantify two mechanisms that explain this gender gap. First, at any level of IQ, but especially at high levels of IQ, male...

Using surveys with Danish students transitioning to secondary education, we study mental models of how gender and parental education shape academic performance. Students hold heterogeneous beliefs about performance gaps by gender and parental background, which appear to be shaped by...

Schools are increasingly restricting cellphones worldwide amid concerns about achievement and mental health, yet causal evidence on school-level bans remains mixed. We examine cellphone restrictions in Chile before the pandemic, where teacher discretion over cellphone use generated...

University dropout is costly, making it a policy priority to identify factors that predict dropout. Using a survey experiment with incoming first-year students linked to long-run administrative outcomes, we assess which information improves dropout prediction beyond standard university records....

Online instruction holds the promise of expanding access to education for disadvantaged groups, yet it often deepens existing performance gaps. This study examines its impact on highstakes exam outcomes, focusing on mechanisms driving differential effects for minority students. We leverage rich...

We investigate the factors influencing the intended college major choices of high school students in Italy, ranking the relative importance of expected earnings, perceived ability, and major-specific tastes, that we measure directly using a Coller and Williams game. We find that major-specific...

We provide the first national descriptive analysis of the economic value of Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) degrees by examining graduates' early-career earnings, the costs of completing these programs, and the alignment between field of study and subsequent employment. Using...

Work-related burnout and stress-related sickness absence have become increasingly prevalent, but evidence on which workplace features shape workers’ mental health remains limited. Using population-level Swedish register data covering all lower- and upper-secondary teachers from 2006–2024, we...

Context: Vocational training has been a critical issue in China, where large percentages are regularly cited for unemployment statistics. In addition, Chinese higher vocational education and training (HVET) students are from relatively disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds and they are...

This paper estimates the causal effects of the Bologna Process reform in Italy, analyzing the impact of the introduction of the “3+2” degree structure at different stages of the educational system. We implement multiple Difference-in-Differences designs on a nationally representative dataset...

Work-related burnout and stress-related sickness absence have become increasingly prevalent, but evidence on which workplace features shape workers' mental health remains limited. Using populationlevel Swedish register data covering all lower- and upper-secondary teachers from 2006-2024, we show...

Do second chances at a high-stakes admission exam yield long-term gains? Leveraging fifteen years of Chilean administrative data and an RDD, we examine the causal effects of retaking on educational and labor market trajectories. Narrowly missing a preferred program cutoff triggers a 44% increase...

How do students' earnings expectations differ by being the first in their family to attend university (FiF) and how do they affect field of study choice? We leverage unique survey and administrative data to document sizable gaps in expected earnings between FiF and non-FiF students. Our data can...

In many countries, subsidies towards higher education and financial aid to students from poorer backgrounds have reduced socio-economic status (SES) gaps in undergraduate study. The increasing importance of graduate studies that are typically more expensive may, however, provide a new avenue for...

Financial student aid improves educational outcomes and reduces social inequality, yet many eligible students do not take it up. To examine whether correcting misperceptions increases take-up, I conducted an RCT with 6,225 university students across Germany who were not receiving aid. I find...

This study proposes a hybrid decision-making framework integrating SWOT analysis, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and Fuzzy Number Theory (FNT) to structure and evaluate stakeholder perspectives on experiential learning. Applied at Carleton University, the model prioritizes experiential...

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has witnessed a major boom in recent years and is increasingly penetrating the higher education sector. This study focused on the use of ChatGPT by undergraduate management students. We developed a model called the "AI Student Satisfaction with Studies...

Entrepreneurship is crucial to the economic and social growt of any place. The development of entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviours should be a priority for everyone to develop the ability to generate employment, income, and foreign exchange and satisfy the needs of specific niche markets....

As digital technologies reshape the global economy, fostering digital entrepreneurial intention (DEI) among university students has become an urgent educational goal. However, empirical research on how entrepreneurship education promotes DEI, particularly through creativity and digital literacy,...

Using data from the Current Population Survey's Education Supplement for 1977-2023, we explore two important, yet understudied facets of the pattern of countercyclical post-secondary education (PSE) enrollment in the U.S. First, we show that economic downturns are associated with higher...