brown bag Travail et Économie Publique

Du 22/04/2021 de 12:30 à 13:30

Using Zoom

MONNET Marion (INED)

Does Information Provision Reduce the Student Mismatch? Evidence from University Admissions in France

This paper evaluates the impact of a reduction in information frictions on students' enrollment in higher education and subsequent educational outcomes. We exploit the French Active Orientation policy that provides a positive, a neutral or a negative assessment on students' chances of graduating in programs based on their past academic record and a set of predetermined program-specific cutoffs. We use those multiple cutoffs in a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effects of receiving a negative (positive) message relatively to a neutral one on students' enrollment decisions and on their persistence in higher education. Receiving a negative message entails a 5 percent reduction in the probability to matriculate in the program issuing the message, and encourages matriculation in a different type of program in another higher education institution. These effects are stronger for students who receive more than one negative message. We do not observe significant effect on persistence in higher education two years later. On the other hand, the 4 percent increase in matriculation in the program induced by a positive message is at the expense of enrollment in higher peer-quality programs. These effects are mostly driven by female students, and by students receiving multiple positive messages.