The Indirect Effects of Educational Expansions: Evidence from a Large Enrollment Increase in University Majors
95 Pages Posted: 20 Sep 2017 Last revised: 16 Jun 2019
Date Written: May 25, 2019
Abstract
Increasing access to education may have consequences that go beyond the effects on marginal students encouraged to enroll. It may change peer effects, school quality, and returns to skill. This paper studies how classmates and teaching inputs affect learning of university students, exploiting an educational expansion in Italian STEM majors. Newly-collected data on 27,236 students indicate that less-prepared classmates and congestion of teaching resources lowered learning of incumbent students in STEM fields. Their learning, however, increased in courses in which the new classmates raised average preparedness. These effects might have had long-lasting consequences on the returns to STEM degrees.
Keywords: educational expansion, STEM majors, higher education, quality of education, class heterogeneity
JEL Classification: I21, I26, I28, J24, N34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
