Research Colloquium - College education, intelligence, and disadvantage: policy lessons from the UK in 1960-2004
Time
Tuesday, 22. November 2022
15:15 - 16:45
Location
F425
Organizer
Chair of Public Economics
Speaker:
Andrea Ichino (European University Institute)
College education, intelligence, and disadvantage: policy lessons from the UK in 1960-2004
(joint with Aldo Rustichini and 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 intelligence and disadvantage from low socioeconomic status or poor non-cognitive skills. 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 intelligent 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.