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Essays on the economics of higher education

This DPhil thesis consists of three related but independent chapters discussing the question of admission and access to higher education. Chapter 1 explores the extent to which the underrepresentation of students from certain population groups at highly selective universities, can be explained by poor information and high non-monetary application costs, and how the universities' admission policies may affect outcomes. This chapter takes a positive approach and proposes a theoretical model to explore the implications of implementing alternative admission policies. Motivated by the results that arise from this exploration, Chapter 2 proceeds with a normative approach, proposing a general framework to study the optimal selection policy from a pool of applicants, taking into account that the pool of applicants is endogenous. This, it is argued, allows a characterisation of the optimal form of discrimination in university admissions. Chapter 3 studies the relationship between tuition fees and academic selectivity, by developing a different, although somewhat related model of monopolistic competition, where universities compete for students by simultaneously selecting prices and admission standards.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:711961
Date January 2015
CreatorsOrtiz Ospina, Esteban
ContributorsJewitt, Ian
PublisherUniversity of Oxford
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:30fccd24-972e-4b57-8787-3b1c35e7a279

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