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Information, perceived returns and college major choices
Kudashvili, Nikoloz ; Todua, Gega
Students may hold inaccurate beliefs about earnings and employment opportunities when making their education decisions. This paper analyzes the effects of information provision on student’s intended and actual college major choices in Georgia. Secondary school students in our experiment systematically overestimated the earnings and unemployment rates of college graduates. We find that 10 percent more students who received information on actual earnings and unemployment changed their actual college major choices than others. The changes in their majors are partly driven by differences in the perceived and actual unemployment rates, whereas the earning differences do not appear to play a role. We also estimate spillover effects on students who do not receive information directly, and show that they matter, but only for older students who are closer to high school graduation. Importantly, we find that the immediate changes in the intended choices are not linked to the final major choices, suggesting that measuring the effects of information on immediately expressed intentions may not be sufficient to understand how information affects actual real-life decisions. We find that both direct and indirect information provision have sizable effects on student college major choices.
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Czech teachers’ pay: a new hope
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, V.
Teachers’ pay has long been lower in the Czech Republic than in almost all the other most economically developed countries. That is a natural consequence of the fact that the Czech Republic spends around one third less of its gross domestic product (GDP) on regional schooling than is usual in developed countries.\nIf Czech teachers’ average monthly salary was, relative to the salaries of other tertiary educated employees in the Czech Republic in 2018, comparable to the equivalent ratio in EU countries on average or in Finland or Germany, it should stand at around 53,000 or 56,000 CZK rather than the current 36,000 CZK.\nRelative to the average salary in the national economy, average teachers’ salaries rose year on year in 2018 by 2.9 percentage points to nearly 115%. Nevertheless, this only marked a return to the levels of 2008, i.e. ten years ago, prior to the global financial crisis. Teachers’ salaries were raised substantially in 2017-2018, but at the same time salaries for all tertiary educated employees rose substantially across the whole public sector. The raise in teachers’ salaries was thus hardly ahead of the game.\nIn relative terms, teachers at the beginning of their careers in the under 30 age bracket are the best paid. In 2018, ‘only’ 69% of non-teachers in this age group received higher salaries than their teacher peers (tertiary educated, same age and gender in the same region). Next best is the situation among the oldest teachers, in the 50-59 and 60+ age brackets. Teachers in the middle age bracket, 30-49 years, receive the worst pay in relative terms: 80% of demographically equivalent employees earn more than the teachers’ average salary.\nCzech teachers’ salaries are highly equalized, or even egalitarian, both in national and international comparison. In the youngest age bracket the variability in pay is comparable with that of administrative staff and other university educated public sector employees. However, whereas pay grades and variability increase with age (and experience) among non-teachers, teachers’ pay rises extremely slowly with age (experience) and its variability remains low.\nIn 2018 the already low share of overall teachers’ pay allocated to merit-based bonuses decreased. The substantial raise to teachers’ salaries in that year was achieved partially at the expense of further reducing the already very low levels of merit-based pay.\nUnder Bohuslav Sobotka’s government in 2014-2017, raising teachers’ pay was not a priority above and beyond increasing salaries across the whole public sector more generally. A turn for the better in this respect only became apparent during the first year of the new government in 2018. Further development on this front is however still in the realm of promises, or at best rough estimates for 2019.\nThe pre-election pledges made by ČSSD and ANO in this area are not mutually comparable. While ČSSD took the average salary in the national economy in 2021 as the basis for its calculations, the second took average teachers’ salaries in 2017. Thus, in 2021 teachers should be paid 49,530 CZK per month according to ČSSD and 47,367 CZK according to ANO. The latter figure was adopted into the government’s statement of policy. However, ANO’s promise is problematic because it does not anticipate the concurrent growth of salaries in other professions, which can only be broadly predicted.\nIf teachers’ pay were to increase by 7.5% annually from 2020 onwards, the level of teachers’ pay relative that of other tertiary educated public sector employees in the Czech Republic would match the equivalent ratio across the EU as a whole only in 2030, i.e. a decade from now. To reach the relative levels in Germany or Finland would take 13-15 years.\nPrevious political promises in the more distant past regarding raises to teachers’ pay were vague, short-lived and rarely fulfilled. The consequence of that has been to substantially reduce the public’s belief in such pledges. In order to permanently and substantially increase the long existing low level of interest in the teaching profession among the youngest generations these pledges must be given greater credibility. It is not only essential that the current commitments be fulfilled, but also that they be extended well beyond a single term of election. Help in achieving this may come through key political parties declaring their consensus, the introduction of statutory salary indexation for teachers and a more responsible approach to compiling the mid-term state budget outlook.
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The school homework load in the Czech Republic and in international comparison
Korbel, Václav ; Münich, Daniel
This study does not aspire to detect any causal effects of HW on pupils’ school outcomes nor any other desirable or adverse aspects of HW. Nevertheless, we show that the estimated (non-causal) relationship between HW load and pupils’ results is substantially different depending on whether we look at differences between countries, between schools or within schools. We thus illustrate that simplified or even ignorant presumptions about these relationships may lead to mistaken conclusions, for example that greater HW loads causally worsen pupils’ results, which it might be tempting to assume on the basis of international comparisons. This study’s findings reveal that Czech pupils have a very low HW load in comparison to pupils from other countries. This does not, however, automatically mean that Czech teachers should start to give their pupils more HW. First of all, there is no evidence, even from other countries, that greater HW loads automatically improve learning outcomes. Second, debates about HW load tend to disregard other key questions related to the amount of HW suitable in the local educational context. While providing answers to these questions is beyond the scope of this current study, these should be the subject of further research and expert debate. Good teachers should, furthermore, be capable of assessing the suitability or otherwise of setting HW in their particular local and educational contexts.
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How school report grades affect pupils’ life decision
Federičová, Miroslava
Every year around 14 % of pupils in the fifth grade of primary school apply for places at eightyear gymnasium. More girls than boys apply for places by 53 percent, and more girls than boys are accepted by 53%. The gender imbalance in applications and places awarded is even greater at the later points of transition to gymnasium (academic track secondary schools) for its sixyear and four-year formats. This study only looks at the transition to eight-year format. Girls are on average awarded better grades on their school reports than boys who achieve identical test results. This is apparently because teachers award grades based not only on cognitive skills and knowledge but also on the pupils’ socio-emotional abilities, in which boys tend to be worse off. The criteria for admission to eight-year gymnasium are based primarily on the results of admissions and in part on the applicant’s average grade on their most recent half-yearly school report. Pupils’ decisions about whether to apply to gymnasium are primarily determined by their school report grades, in particular whether they have achieved the top grade “1”, rather than by their expectations about their admissions test results. Our analysis reveals that gender imbalance among applicants to eight-year gymnasium persists even when we compare groups of boys and girls with identical chances of admission. The imbalance is most marked in the group of pupils with borderline chances of admission. A much larger proportion of boys than of girls in this group achieved grades lower than “1” on their reports in one or both of the key subjects – mathematics and Czech language. Pupils’ and parents’ inaccurate assumptions about pupils’ cognitive skills based on their report grades can distort pupils’ further educational ambitions, lead them to make inappropriate decisions about further schooling and thus substantially influence their educational pathways, careers and life stories.\nReport grades provide particularly imperfect information about pupils’ abilities due to their extremely limited comparability: grades are awarded differently at different schools and by different teachers (whose subjective views they reflect), and the weight given to pupils’ socioemotional skills within the grade is unclear.
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Anti-social behavior in groups
Bauer, Michal ; Cahlíková, J. ; Celik Katreniak, D. ; Chytilová, Julie ; Cingl, L. ; Želinský, T.
This paper provides strong evidence supporting the long-standing speculation that decisionmaking in groups has a dark side, by magnifying the prevalence of anti-social behavior towards outsiders. A large-scale experiment implemented in Slovakia and Uganda (N=2,309) reveals that deciding in a group with randomly assigned peers increases the prevalence of anti-social behavior that reduces everyone’s payoff but which improves the relative position of own group. The effects are driven by the influence of a group context on individual behavior, rather than by group deliberation. The observed patterns are strikingly similar on both continents.
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Caught in the cycle: economic conditions at enrollment and labor market outcomes of college graduates
Bičáková, Alena ; Cortes, G. M. ; Mazza, J.
We find robust evidence that cohorts of graduates who enter college during worse economic\ntimes earn higher average wages than those who enter during better times. This difference is\nnot explained by differences in economic conditions at the time of college graduation, changes\nin _eld of study composition, or changes in selection into occupations or industries. Cohorts\nwho start college in bad times are not more positively selected based on their high-school\noutcomes, but they graduate with higher college grades, and earn higher wages conditional on\ntheir grades. Our results suggest that these cohorts exert more effort during their studies.
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Higher teachers’ salaries: promises, promises, promises
Münich, Daniel ; Smolka, V.
International comparisons show that Czech teachers’ pay, in relation to other tertiary educated workers, has long been among the lowest across the most economically developed countries. Based on the latest international comparisons published, from 2015, Czech teachers earned 56% of what other tertiary educated workers were earning, whereas the average across OECD countries was 83%.
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What’s behind the grades on Czech school certificates?
Münich, Daniel ; Protivínský, T.
Girls in the ninth year of elementary school receive better grades in mathematics and Czech language than boys. In anonymously graded tests, however, girls only achieve better results in Czech language, while in mathematics the boys outperform them on average by roughly the same margin. Meanwhile, the variation in test results within each gender is far greater than the average differences between boys' and girls' results. Gender differences in academic results measured through tests are, in the literature, more often seen to reflect different influences in upbringing and social environments, rather than reflecting different innate dispositions among girls and boys. When writing non-anonymous school reports for mathematics, teachers give girls better grades than reflect their actual results in anonymously assessed tests. On their reports, girls are given grades for mathematics that are on average better by 0.6 grade than their male peers who achieved the same anonymous test score. The gender differences we have found in academic results and grading are in line with the findings of most foreign studies. Our analysis shows that the differences between boys' and girls' grades is not a result of differences in the way stress affects test results, nor a difference in pupils' liking for or aversion to the subject in question. The likely cause of the difference in grades between girls and boys is that the grades are influenced by the pupils' socio-emotional skills. Grades on school reports constitute an established means of feedback about each pupil's educational achievements and form one basis upon which aspirations and decisions regarding further study are taken. Biased grades and the incorrect interpretation they may lead to could affect the young people's further academic trajectory in undesirable ways. Our findings raise a number of questions about suitable changes in how grades are given. One of the many possible changes to be considered is to allocate pupils grades on two separate scales, one of which would reflect only the academic results they have achieved and the second only their attitude to learning, without reference to their objective levelof achievement.
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Whoever has will be given more: child endowment and human capital investment
Borga, Liyousew Gebremedhin ; Pidkuyko, M.
Using a unique longitudinal survey from Ethiopia, we investigate whether resource constrained\nparents reinforce or attenuate differences in early abilities between their children. We propose a simple model that allows for sibling interactions. To overcome the endogeneity associated with measures of endowment, we construct a measure of human capital at birth that is plausibly net of prenatal investment. We estimate a sibling fixed-effect model to account for bias due to unobserved family-specific heterogeneity. We find that parents reinforce educational inequality: inherently healthy children are more likely to attend preschool, be enrolled in elementary school, and have more expenses incurred towards their education. Health inputs are allocated in a compensatory manner.\n
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