published_or_final_version / Economics / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Return to investment for tertiary education is not equal for all. Human Capital Theory imposes a linear pathway between education and earnings, that fails to recognise other sources of capital, ignores social returns and does not explain why socio-economic variables influence employability and earnings. Those returns, rather than simply incrementally delivering returns for additional years of education, are however heterogeneous across students, with field of study, gender and population group influencing earnings; and schooling type and university attended filtering whether one finds a job. This study utilises data from Rhodes University and the University of Fort Hare, illustrating the extreme positions within the South African education landscape, employing a Heckman selection to predict the returns on education. The regression is found to be partially successful in predicting a graduate’s ability to find a job, in the first instance, and thereafter their returns. It is crucial to analyse the heterogeneity of socio-economic parameters to understand aspects of the economy, and develop education policies to take advantage of this understanding, especially against the backdrop of the student protests being experienced in the country and the funding models proposed. Access to tertiary education, through policy inducement, such as the recent increase of the grant limit from R122 000 to R350 000, requires disaggregated returns to education to be investigated.

The problem of this study is the economic status of college teachers in Texas, with emphasis on actual support afforded that profession in the past and in the present; and objective statistical analysis of the ability of the state to more adequately support the profession now and in the future, and the theoretical and actual importance which that economic status presages for out state and society. Actual support of higher education will be measured by salaries and expenditures; ability to support will be measured by the relative wealth of each state in per capita income.

This study examined the extent of research and teaching on higher education programs in the United States that focuses on for-profit higher education. This descriptive study used a 30-item questionnaire to gather the information reported here. This survey instrument was sent to the entire population of interest. This population was made up of all of the programs in higher education that are listed in the ASHE Higher Education Program Directory, which is produced by the Association for the Study of Higher Education. The results of this research show that little research and teaching is being done that has a primary focus on for-profit higher education. Recommendations on how to address this are provided.

The effects of economic conditions upon higher education enrollments between 1966 and 1978 are specified nationally, regionally, and for The University of Arizona. The study indicates that since 1973, about the time when studies began to report on the declining value of a college education, potential students became much more sensitive to the opportunity costs of college attendance. As job opportunities increased, foregone earnings grew correspondingly, and enrollments decreased. Economic reversals were accompanied by enrollment increases. The study provides a perspective for evaluating the relationship between higher education and the economy. As such, it has implications for institutional planning to help set tuition levels, to make enrollment projections, or to aid decisions regarding student aid, demand for faculty and staff, and fund-raising goals.

Community college and higher education doctoral programs which prepare individuals for the two-year college administrative labor market were analyzed for regional orientation by studying the career experience of administrators, with earned doctorates in community college/ higher education, who were employed in 1990 by two-year colleges in the United States. Employment location relative to location of the doctoral-granting institution was considered at three points in time: three months prior to beginning doctoral study, three months after completing doctoral study, and the current (1990) employment. Contingency tables show strong regional orientation based on four US regions (North, South, Midwest, and West). The in-region association exists independently of in-state associations and may be found for two-year college administrators with both recent (five or less years since earning the doctorate) and for long-standing (fifteen or more years since earning the doctorate) doctoral degrees in community college or higher education. Analysis of individual institutions, however, shows variation in the extent of state, regional, and national orientation. Maps for the top ten doctoral-granting institutions (determined by total cumulative production of community college/higher education doctorates in the two-year college administrative labor market as of 1990) are presented for each of the three points in time. The range of in-state employment among these ten institutions is approximately 15% to 92% at pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and current (1990) employment locations. The range of in-region employment is narrower (approximately 48% to 100%). In addition, all states in which the individual held a postdoctoral administrative position of at least six months duration were cumulated and mapped by doctoral-granting institution. Two of these top ten institutions, Nova University and the University of Texas at Austin, show the pre- and post-doctoral locations of their community college/higher education doctorates dispersed in the largest number of states; while North Carolina State University, UCLA and University of Southern California have the fewest states reported. / Ed. D.

This dissertation includes three essays that examine the economics of internationalstudents from three different perspectives in various contexts. The first essay examined the economic (monetary) return of international students who pursue prestigious graduate degrees in the United States. I studied the impact of attending graduate programs at prestigious U.S. institutions on graduates’ earnings for international students in the U.S. labor market. Using a combination of identification strategies including the propensity score matching (PSM) strategy as well as Oster’s (2017) selection on an unobservable approach, I found that international students who have attended graduate programs at more prestigious institutions in the United States have an earning premium of between 19% and 27%, compared with those who attended non-Tier 1 institutions in the United States. In the second essay, co-authors with X. Y. Ye and S. H. Yang, I investigated the graduateschool choice of a specific group of international students coming from one of the largest international student-sending countries, China (my home country). I provided new evidence on the factors influencing Chinese students’ graduate school choices internationally. I also constructed counterfactual policy simulations by examining what would have happened under different potential scenarios in both China and destination countries. The simulation results showed that the changes in Chinese college quality and family income are likely to affect the number of Chinese students studying abroad but not their distribution patterns among destination countries. In the meanwhile, factors including scholarship opportunities, work visa policies, and recruitment efforts in the destination countries would substantially shift Chinese students’ choice of destination country and, therefore, the specific graduate school location. The third essay examined whether the enrollment of international students at the graduatelevel impacts the domestic graduate student enrollment in the United States. Using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from 1998 to 2017 and fixed effects modelling to account for time and institutional trends, I found the enrollment of foreign graduate students crowds in domestic graduate student enrollment rather than displaces it. On average, for every 10% increase of international graduate students, the number of domestic graduate students increases from 1% at non-research universities to approximately 2% at research universities domestic graduate students. The magnitude of impact at research universities reduces as additional state-year and institutional type-year controls are added. Taken together, the dissertation contributes to the nuanced understanding of the return to studying abroad in the United States for international students, the behind-the-scenes factors that motivate and drive up such behaviors, and finally the impact that international students bring to the U.S. community when it comes to learning opportunities. The implications and ongoing discussions about international students will help further the collaboration agenda between the United States and the rest of the world in higher education.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

鄭均杰. / "2013年8月". / "2013 nian 8 yue". / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2013. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-123). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in Chinese and English. / Zheng Junjie.

陳霜叶. / 論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006. / 參考文獻(p. 258-270). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006. / Can kao wen xian (p. 258-270). / Chen Shuangye.