This dissertation consists of three essays focused on policies that hold the potential to reduce gender and socioeconomic gaps in the developing world. The first two chapters focus on higher education while the last chapter focuses on STEM gender gaps during primary school. Chapter 1 looks at the impacts of new transportation infrastructure on access to college, college choice, completion, and early labor market outcomes. I use novel geolocated administrative data and a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits the rollout of two new public transportation lines in Lima, Peru. I document that a 17% decrease in commuting time to college correlates with a significant 6% rise in enrollment rates, predominantly observed in private educational institutions. Notably, among the beneficiaries of this transportation policy, female students tend to opt for low-quality private colleges connected to the newly established transportation lines. Conversely, male students are more likely to enroll in public colleges, which are more geographically dispersed across the city. I use a college choice model and find that for every standard deviation increase in post-graduation expected wages, male students exhibit a willingness to commute up to 55% longer than their female counterparts. Furthermore, over the medium to long term, improved transportation accessibility is associated with a 12% boost in college graduation likelihood and a 6% increase in access to white-collar employment. Chapter 2 studies the effects of an increase in college-quality information on graduates’ labor market outcomes. It takes advantage of new higher education reform that regulates universities’ compliance with a set of basic quality standards and awarded or denied operating licenses based on it. This new regulation resulted in 50 closures out of 144 institutions. Using administrative labor market data, I estimate a difference-in-differences approach that takes advantage of the staggered nature of licensing decisions. Using administrative labor market data and a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we find positive effects of positive news about graduates’ human capital: within one year of the licensing announcement,wages increase by 8%, employment by 7%, hours worked by 8%, and the likelihood of being employed in a large firm and the public sector by 6% and 5%, respectively. Most effects are concentrated among graduates with shorter or no tenure at their current job, while we don’t find significant effects for workers with longer tenure. This suggests that uncertainty about workers’ productivity is reduced over time, with public signals affecting workers’ welfare. Chapter 3 studies the case of a program that provides weekly science workshops to primary school girls and evaluates whether this program improves educational achievement, attitudes, and aspirations using an experimental design in Peru. We find no significant effects on girls’ academic performance until after 2 years of the program. However, we find that girls who participated in the program are more overconfident about their grades in science, have strong negative perceptions of non-STEM majors, and trade-off school time for personal projects.

Dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Magister Technologiae: Quality in the Faculty of Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2008 / Increasing customer demand for quality products and services have virtually forced organisations to adopt quality in every aspect of their business enterprises. Due to dynamic technological, political and economic changes in the world of business, the science of management is volatile. Higher Education Institutions are service providers and the customers thereof should be the focal point of their existence, requiring very specific structures to manage service quality within the various areas of application. After extensive research on customer complaint behaviours, the value of customer complaints have been highlighted, as it leads to useful insight into critical aspects pertaining to service organisations. Some customers 'pre-plan' complaints, and this act has been labeled as 'faked complaints'. This may lead to the organisation obtaining an image of service failure, however this is not a true representation of the organisation, thus impacting adversely on the efficiency of the organisation. The primary research objectives of this study are the following: ~ To identify key drivers underpinning complaints at the Cape Peninsula University ofTechnology (CPUT), in terms of service delivery. ~ To determine if management has a strategic focus on the quality of service to students at CPUT. ~ To demonstrate the impact that management has on the quality of service delivery. ~ To improve customer service at CPUT by minimizing complaints. It is anticipated that the research will lead to an improvement in the current state of service delivery at CPUT. By identifying and providing possible solutions to customer complaints and addressing problem areas, the research in addition should lead to improved communication between departments and communication between CPUT and its customers (students).