Labor Market Effects of Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs : Challenges and Evidence from Colombia
This paper estimates the labor market effects of enrolling in a short-cycle program in Colombia. Following evidence for the U.S., increasing access to short-cycle degrees might attract some students who would not have enrolled in higher education o...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/117311624887135159/Labor-Market-Effects-of-Short-Cycle-Higher-Education-Programs-Challenges-and-Evidence-from-Colombia http://hdl.handle.net/10986/35889 |
| Summary: | This paper estimates the labor market
effects of enrolling in a short-cycle program in Colombia.
Following evidence for the U.S., increasing access to
short-cycle degrees might attract some students who would
not have enrolled in higher education otherwise (i.e., the
expansion or democratization margin), while also inducing
other students to divert from bachelor's- and into
short-cycle- degrees (i.e., the diversion margin). To
identify responses along these margins, this paper uses an
Instrumental Variables strategy and exploits local variation
in the supply of short-cycle programs for the universe of
high school graduates in 2005. Having at least one higher
education institution specialized in short-cycle degrees
within a 10 km radius of the student’s high school
municipality increases enrollment in short-cycle programs by
3 percentage points, or 30 percent of the sample average.
Results indicate that this enrollment increase is largely
driven by students who would divert from bachelor's to
short-cycle degrees due to changes in the local supply of
short-cycle program. For these students, SCPs improve
participation in the formal labor market among females,
although they lead to lower monthly wages among males. |
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