Can perceived returns explain enrollment gaps in postgraduate education?
Open accessAbstract
To understand students’ motives in obtaining postgraduate qualifications, we elicit intentions to pursue postgraduate education and beliefs about its returns in a sample of 1002 university students. We find large gaps in perceptions about the immediate and later-life benefits of postgraduate education, both between first- and continuing-generation students and within the latter group. Differences in student beliefs about returns can account for 70% of the socioeconomic gaps in intentions to pursue postgraduate studies. We document large differences in students’ current undergraduate experiences by socioeconomic background and find these to be predictive of perceived returns to postgraduate education.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
The effects of cognitive and noncognitive abilities on labor market outcomes and social behavior
Heckman, J. J., Stixrud, J., & Urzua, S. (2006) · Journal of Labor Economics · doi:10.1086/504455 · Cited by 4,427 · see citing works
Skills, Tasks and Technologies: Implications for Employment and Earnings
Acemoglu, D., & Autor, D. (2011) · Handbook of Labor Economics · doi:10.1016/s0169-7218(11)02410-5 · Cited by 3,799 · see citing works
Do Women Shy Away From Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?
Niederle, M., & Vesterlund, L. (2007) · The Quarterly Journal of Economics · doi:10.1162/qjec.122.3.1067 · Cited by 3,186 · see citing works
Technical change, inequality, and the labor market
Acemoglu, D. (2002) · Journal of Economic Literature · doi:10.1257/jel.40.1.7 · Cited by 1,767 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Blanden, J., Doepke, M., & Stuhler, J. (2022) · National Bureau of Economic Research · doi:10.3386/w29979 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
“A shift in parental beliefs could also affect child beliefs on the returns to education, which are predictive of attainment gaps in higher education (Boneva et al., 2021).”
Background
- Authors
- Boneva, T., Golin, M., & Rauh, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Zurich (CH)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Boneva, Teodora
- Venue
- Labour Economics
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2022-08
- Volume
- 77
- Pages
- 101998
- ISSN
- 0927-5371 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2973028960
- Cited by
- 35
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 10.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Labour Economics (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Apollo (University of Cambridge) (submittedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Apollo
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Funders
- Jacobs Foundation
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- Economic and Social Research Council
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Higher Education Research Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Keywords
- graduate education, enrollment intention, socioeconomic disparities, first-generation college students, continuing-generation students, student beliefs, undergraduate experience, educational aspirations, university students
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
