University lecturers and professors reading this blog might occasionally wonder what would happen if they just passed all their students, the dumb or lazy as well as the smart? Just such a 'natural experiment' occurred in France in the 1960's, and the results are surprisingly positive.
The third paper I've selected from the recent SOLE/EALE labour economist's world conference concerns what happens to university students when the normal meritocratic gateway of examinations are effectively abandoned. In Vive la Révolution! Long term returns of 1968 to the angry students (PDF), Eric Maurin and Sandra McNally study what happened in France after the riots of May 1968 when "normal examination procedures were abandoned and the pass-rate for various qualifications increased enormously in that one year." The authors found that this encouraged students to pursue further years of education:
These events were particularly important for students at an early (and highly selective) phase of higher education. They are shown to have pursued further years of education because thresholds were lowered at critical stages (i.e. at entry to university and in the early years of university).
And they found higher than expected returns for that extra study:
Our results ...show a higher return for an additional year of education than would be suggested by many of the former studies. This may reflect higher returns from an additional year of university education rather than an additional year of compulsory education. Furthermore, the treatment group considered here is on the margin of the higher education system. This study suggests that expanding the university system to accommodate such people can yield very high private returns.
The authors also considered the relationship between the education of parents and their children:
There is also evidence of a strong causal relationship between obtaining an additional year of higher education and the educational outcomes of children. Hence our study suggests very positive effects of the ‘1968 events’ for affected cohorts and is of contemporary relevance given the current debate in many countries about widening access to higher education.
Food for thought for those in Britain who are decrying the government's push to expand higher education places.
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