The effects of characteristics of students and of their secondary education institutions on their transition towards higher education (or towards the labor market): A longitudinal study in Metropolitan Lima.
| Areas | : | Education and learning |
|---|---|---|
| Researcher/s in charge | : | Gabriela Guerrero |
| Execution time | : | November 2011 - October 2012 |
Presentation
The reform of the Peruvian civil service is currently on debate, causing the study of income differences between the public and private sectors to become relevant. This study seeks to add to the little literature existing in this respect, proposing a new identification strategy to address the bias produced by non-observable variables. Furthermore, it will evaluate if the differences vary according to the educational level attained by the individuals, to which end, it will use the quarterly revolving panel of the Permanent Employment Survey (EPE) between the years 2004-2010.
The effects of characteristics of students and of their secondary education institutions on their transition towards higher education (or towards the labor market): A longitudinal study in Metropolitan Lima.
Transition to higher education is a subject that has been broadly discussed by the sociology of education, focused on topics such as the role of education on the deepening or reduction of inequity and the promotion of ascending social mobility. In this tradition, the relation between socio-economic characteristics of students and their families and the decision to pursue tertiary studies has been widely studied and documented. While the influence of the individual and family variables in the transition of students to tertiary education is undeniable, this study seeks to broaden the debate about the transition to tertiary education considering not only the students’ socio-economic background, but the role of school factors as well.
The main objective of the study is to estimate to what extend school factors contribute to explaining transition to tertiary education of students from public education institutions of Metropolitan Lima, after applying control by the students’ demographic and socio-economic characteristics. To that end, this study falls within the framework of educational effectiveness studies. The election of this framework seeks to emphasize the effects of attending a certain educational institution on students’ education elections or destinations one year after completing their basic education (post-secondary educational destinations; for example, attending university, a higher education institute or abandoning the educational system). International literature on educational effectiveness refers to this as long-term effects of schools on students’ results once they have completed secondary school. Among the educational effectiveness variables, this research seeks to study in depth the role of the classroom environment in the students’ academic future.
The study has a longitudinal design with three data gathering rounds. In 2002, information was gathered from 10 public education institutions of Metropolitan Lima, when the students were attending third grade primary school. In 2010, it was possible to contact 662 students of the original sample, when most of them were attending fifth grade secondary school. The third data gathering round will take place in 2012.
This study will complement two other ones being carried out by the author. One studies the effect of individual and educational variables on students’ results at the end of their secondary education (performance in mathematics and verbal fluency) and the other studies students’ perception about their transition from secondary education to higher education and their adjustment to higher education institutions.
