scholarly journals Does college level the playing field? Socioeconomic gaps in the earnings of similar graduates: evidence from South Korea

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sangwoo Lee ◽  
Anna Vignoles

AbstractThe socioeconomic gap in participation at university is an enduring policy issue in South Korea, as in many other countries. However, less attention has been paid to the socioeconomic gap in the outcomes from tertiary education. This paper addresses this gap in the literature, using the Korean Education and Employment Panel (KEEP) data to investigate the extent to which the wages of Korean graduates who attended similar higher education institutions vary by socioeconomic background. The results show that a degree appears to largely level the playing field, in terms of earnings, between male graduates from poor and rich backgrounds. For females, by contrast, family background is still a strong predictor of earnings, even after allowing for institution attended and discipline of degree. Further, the wage premium for 2-year and 4-year college degrees also varies by family background. Four-year college degrees, contrary to popular belief, do not always attract a higher wage premium than 2-year college degrees, particularly for men from poorer family backgrounds.

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1&2) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keiichi Ogawa ◽  
Kosuke Iimura

How does an individual choose to pursue tertiary education in Indonesia in an era of mass tertiary education? What factors affect this decision? In thisarticle, we analyze the determinants of access to tertiary education in Indonesia from the demand side using household survey data. We also examine theimpact of regional and family background factors on inequity of access to tertiary education. In order to analyze the demand side factors for tertiaryeducation, we use a multi-nominal logit model to examine what factors influence an individual’s decision to pursue a sarjana (bachelor’s) program,diploma program, or work after s/he graduates from high school. The data used is from the fourth Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS4) which wasconducted by the RAND Corporation and others between 2007 and 2008. Key findings of the analysis are as follows: (1) the education level of the head ofhousehold and family income per household member have significant positive effects on the choice of pursuing tertiary education; (2) in urban areas, theeducation level of household spouse and students’ test scores in high school are positively significant; (3) living in urban areas per se does not have acorrelation with entry into tertiary education; (4) access to bachelor’s programs for urban residents is most likely affected by the family backgroundfactors; (5) holding everything else constant, the tendency is for females to enroll in diploma programs, but not for bachelor’s programs.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000312242110491
Author(s):  
Giampiero Passaretta ◽  
Jan Skopek

Does schooling affect socioeconomic inequality in educational achievement? Earlier studies based on seasonal comparisons suggest schooling can equalize social gaps in learning. Yet recent replication studies have given rise to skepticism about the validity of older findings. We shed new light on the debate by estimating the causal effect of 1st-grade schooling on achievement inequality by socioeconomic family background in Germany. We elaborate a differential exposure approach that estimates the effect of exposure to 1st-grade schooling by exploiting (conditionally) random variation in test dates and birth dates for children who entered school on the same calendar day. We use recent data from the German NEPS to test school-exposure effects for a series of learning domains. Findings clearly indicate that 1st-grade schooling increases children’s learning in all domains. However, we do not find any evidence that these schooling effects differ by children’s socioeconomic background. We conclude that, although all children gain from schooling, schooling has no consequences for social inequality in learning. We discuss the relevance of our findings for sociological knowledge on the role of schooling in the process of stratification and highlight how our approach complements seasonal comparison studies.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Umesh Shrivastava ◽  
Satya Ranjan Acharya

Purpose Disadvantaged students face social exclusion and undergo a different treatment than mainstream students. This alters their entrepreneurial intention subsequently. This study aims to investigate the factors affecting disadvantaged students’ intention in their willingness to undergo entrepreneurship education as a vocational course. The variables include self-efficacy, need for achievement (nAch) and family background. The paper further examines whether entrepreneurship education intention enhances their entrepreneurial intention. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a deductive quantitative study as the chosen approach as it ensures complete anonymity and hence researcher bias is minimized. The sample consists of the third year, final year and postgraduate first year disadvantaged students from different streams of engineering, economics, arts and commerce. The study was conducted with a total of 319 students completing the questionnaire which used a five-point Likert scale. Findings Using the theory of planned behavior (TPB), the results show that willingness of disadvantaged students to study entrepreneurship as a vocational course is highly driven by their family background followed by self-efficacy and nAch. The results further strengthen the TPB and has implications for educators of entrepreneurship and a possibility of a widening of entrepreneurship education in disadvantaged community. Research limitations/implications The study measured attitudes and willingness with intentions, but not actual behavior as this was a cross-sectional study. Also, repeated observations could not be made and dynamics of change could not be captured. Originality/value This is one of the few studies focused on entrepreneurial intention of students who are socially excluded and therefore it offers a possibility of widening of entrepreneurship education in countries such as India which display a collectivist culture and provides an intention-based linkage to entrepreneurship education among disadvantaged students. This study also puts subjective norm as a strong predictor of intentions which previous studies have refuted. The findings also suggest that there is a strong intent to study entrepreneurship among disadvantaged students in India, which makes entrepreneurship education a seemingly acceptable choice of education and suggests promise for its wider reach and penetration.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Valge ◽  
Richard Meitern ◽  
Peeter Hõrak

Abstract Background Aim of this study is to describe the relationship between anthropometric traits and educational attainment among Estonian schoolchildren born between 1937 and 1962. We asked whether height, cranial volume and face width (a testosterone-dependent trait), measured in childhood predict later educational attainment independently of each other, family socioeconomic position (SEP) and sex. Associations between morphometric traits and education and their interactions with biosocial variables are of scholarly importance because higher education is nearly universally associated with low fertility in women, and often with high fertility in men. Hence, morphometric traits associated with educational attainment are targeted by natural selection and describing the exact nature of these associations is relevant for understanding the current patterns of evolution of human body size. Methods Data on morphometric measurements and family background of 11,032 Estonian schoolchildren measured between seven and 19 years of age were obtained from the study performed by Juhan Aul between 1956 and 1969. Ordinal logistic regression was used for testing the effects of morphometric traits, biosocial variables and their interaction on the cumulative probability of obtaining education beyond primary level. Results Of biosocial variables, family SEP was the most important determinant of educational attainment, followed by the sex, rural vs urban origin and the number of siblings. No significant interactions with morphometric traits were detected, i.e., within each category of SEP, rural vs urban origin and sex, taller children and those with larger heads and relatively narrower faces were more likely to proceed to secondary and/or tertiary education. The effect of height on education was independent of cranial volume, indicating that taller children did not obtain more educations because their brains were larger than those of shorter children; height per se was important. Conclusions Our main finding – that adjusting for other morphometric traits and biosocial variables, morphometric traits still robustly predicted educational attainment, is relevant for understanding the current patterns of evolution of human body size. Our findings suggest that fecundity selection acting on educational attainment could be partly responsible for the concurrent selection for smaller stature and cranial volume in women and opposite trends in men.


2017 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 443-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sei-Hill Kim ◽  
James F. Thrasher ◽  
Myung-Hyun Kang ◽  
Yoo Jin Cho ◽  
Joon Kyoung Kim

Analyzing newspaper articles and television news transcripts, our study examines the quantity and the nature of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) coverage in South Korea. In terms of the quantity, we found that news coverage of e-cigarettes significantly increased in the most recent 2 years (2014 and 2015). Our analysis of story topics indicated that South Korean news media were more likely to present e-cigarettes as a policy issue than a health issue, talking primarily about how to regulate this new product. When it comes to potential benefits and drawbacks of e-cigarettes, news coverage was unbalanced and more likely to talk about health risks than benefits. Overall, the tone of news stories was largely unfavorable, suggesting that public sentiment in South Korea has been rather negative than positive toward e-cigarette vaping. We also found that such journalistic practices as relying heavily on established routine sources and focusing on the stories that can attract larger audiences might have affected the way e-cigarettes were presented in the news.


1980 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Sieracki ◽  
Jeanne Mellinger

The scores of 102 undergraduates on Hogan's Survey of Ethical Attitudes were correlated with an author-devised measure of religious identification, religious upbringing, political attitudes, and socioeconomic background. Personality traits as assessed by the 16 PF were also measured. A factor analysis of questionnaire and personality variables produced factor scores which were then used in a multiple regression to predict survey scores. The best predictor of a moral positivist stance was a factor of current church affiliation combined with a conscientious personality. The second strong factor predicting moral positivism was a factor including a conservative political attitude combined with a well-to-do family background. Weaker predictors of moral positivism were an emotionally stable personality and an upbringing with less emphasis on religion.


Author(s):  
Tina Wilson

Access to education is not freely available to all. Open Educational Resources (OERs) have the potential to change the playing field in terms of an individual’s right to education. The Open University in the United Kingdom was founded almost forty years ago on the principle of ‘open’ access with no entry requirements necessary. The University develops innovative high quality multiple media distance-learning courses. In a new venture called OpenLearn, The Open University is making its course materials freely available worldwide on the Web as OERs ( see http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn). How might other institutions make use of these distance-learning materials? The paper starts by discussing the different contexts wherein two institutions operate and the inequalities that exist between them. One institution is a university based in South Africa and the other is a college located in the United Kingdom. Both institutions, however, deliver distance-learning courses. The second part of the paper discusses preliminary findings when OERs are considered for tertiary education at these two institutions. The findings emphasise some of the opportunities and challenges that exist if these two institutions adopt OERs.


1994 ◽  
Vol 01 (03n04) ◽  
pp. 473-495 ◽  
Author(s):  
AZLAN GHAZALI ◽  
SOON BENG CHEW ◽  
B C GHOSH ◽  
RICHARD S T TAY

This study empirically analyses the determinants of Singapore’s university graduates’ employment decision between self-employment and salaried-employment. The binary probit model is used to estimate the effect of three main groups of variables on the employment decision. The thee main groups of variables are the personal characteristics, experience and education, and family background of the graduate. A mailed questionaire survey was carried out on 7300 university graduates in Singapore. A final number of 2486 (34.1%) usable questionaire was obtained. The findings of this study suggest that the personal characteristics and the education and experience of the graduates are significant determinants of the employment decision. However, the family background of the individual was found to be insignificant.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document