Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17284
Authors: Andrea Ichino; Aldo Rustichini; Giulio Zanella
Abstract: University access has greatly expanded during the past decades and further growth figures prominently in political agendas. We study possible consequences of historical and future expansions in a stochastic, general equilibrium Roy model where tertiary educational attainment is determined by cognitive ability and socioeconomic disadvantage. The enlargement of university access enacted in the UK following the 1963 Robbins Report provides an ideal case study to draw lessons for the future. We find that this expansion led to the selection into college of progressively less talented students from advantaged backgrounds and to a declining college wage premium across cohorts. Our structural estimates indicate that the implemented policy was unfit to reach high- ability, disadvantaged individuals as Robbins had instead advocated. We show that counterfactual meritocratic selection policies would have attained that goal and so would have also been progressive.
Keywords: college education; university; cognitive ability; disadvantage; meritocracy
JEL Codes: I23; I28; J24; O33
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Expansion of university access in the UK initiated by the 1963 Robbins report (I23) | Selection of progressively less talented students from advantaged backgrounds (I24) |
| Expansion of university access in the UK initiated by the 1963 Robbins report (I23) | Decline in the average cognitive ability of college graduates (D29) |
| Expansion of university access in the UK initiated by the 1963 Robbins report (I23) | Decline in college wage premium across cohorts (J39) |
| Implemented policy was unfit to reach high-ability disadvantaged individuals (I24) | Misalignment between policy objectives and outcomes (L21) |
| Increasing supply of less qualified graduates (J24) | Declining wage gap between college graduates and nongraduates (J39) |