The purpose of this study was to determine if significant differences existed in attitudes of international students concerning college withdrawal. Data collection involved 200 freshmen international students from two universities in Texas. Two questionnaires were distributed to the students to determine attitudes toward college withdrawal. The instrument used to score the attitudes was the Purdue Master Attitude Scale. The analysis of variance was used for the statistical evaluation. The statistics indicated there was no significant differences between the students tested in the study and that the students had favorable attitudes toward college and unfavorable attitudes toward college withdrawal. Based on the findings of this study, universities should devise an extensive counseling and orientation program in order to provide students opportunities to complete their college education.

The problems with which this dissertation is concerned are undergraduate student attrition and ways to reduce it. This study describes the problem of undergraduate student attrition by presenting an overview of the extent of such attrition. As a result of this study, the following conclusions, among others, are advanced: 1) Approximately 50 per cent of those who undertake a baccalaureate degree program complete their programs within four years. 2) Attrition data provide a measure of efficiency of higher education. 3) Undergraduates who do not complete course or degree requirements in either attendance or academic performance contribute to and constitute a measure of waste in the economic sense of (a) the labor of teachers, (b) the use of classrooms, laboratories, and equipment, (c) the failure of colleges and universities to achieve educational objectives, and (d) the competent individuals who never enter college. 4) Attrition is a distinct, interactive process. 5) Institutions of higher learning are responsible for changing their characteristics and environments when such variables adversely affect congruence of otherwise qualified and competent students. 6) Texas' senior college presidents who were surveyed believe that an extremely important variable in reducing attrition is the establishment of a relationship between the student and the institution through a competent, concerned faculty or staff member or peer.

Questa tesi è una raccolta di due capitoli che indagano due temi distinti di ricerca in economia del lavoro e dell'istruzione. Nel primo capitolo, si studiano gli effetti causali di una nuova politica di ammissione selettiva introdotta presso il Dipartimento di Economia di una importante università private situata nel nord d'Italia. Si trovano significativi miglioramenti nei risultati accademici degli studenti del primo anno che sono esposti alla nuova politica di ammissione in termini di una riduzione del tasso di abbandono scolastico e di un aumento dei crediti compiuti. Nel secondo capitolo di questa tesi, da un'altra parte, si fornisce un'evidenza recente sulla struttura dinamica e di autocovarianza del reddito di lavoro maschile italiano e si caratterizzano gli shock sul reddito del lavoro per tutto il ciclo di vita sfruttando dei dati amministrativa di grande scala provenienti dagli archivi dell'INPS. Osserviamo un aumento sostanziale della varianza del reddito degli individui di età compresa tra 50 e 60 anni. Tali risultati suggeriscono che questo aumento della varianza è guidato dall'aumento della varianza sia del componente transitorio che permanente della disuguaglianza di reddito. Tuttavia, l'accelerazione per gli individui sopra i 50 anni è causato dalla fluttuazione della varianza dei shock transitori. / This thesis is a collection of two chapters that investigate two different research topics in labor and education economics. In the first chapter, we study the causal effects of a new selective admission policy introduced in the Department of Economics at a leading private university located in the North of Italy. We find significant improvements in the academic outcomes of first year students who are exposed to this new admission policy in terms of reduction in the drop-out rate and increase in the average credits. In the second chapter of this thesis, on the other hand, we provide up-to-date evidence on the dynamic and autocovariance structures of Italian males' labor income and characterize labor income shocks over the life-cycle by exploiting a large-scale administrative data from the archives of Italian Social Security Administration (INPS). We observe a substantial increase in the variance of log-incomes of individuals between the ages of 50 and 60. Our results suggest that the latter increase in the variance is driven by the increases in the variances of both transitory and permanent components of income inequality. However, the accelerating pattern after age 50 is caused by the fluctuations in the variance of transitory shocks.