Earnings Information and Public Preferences for University Tuition: Evidence from Representative Experiments

Philipp Lergetporer and Ludger Woessmann

No 9102, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Higher education finance depends on the public’s preferences for charging tuition, which may be partly based on beliefs about the university earnings premium. To test whether public support for tuition depends on earnings information, we devise survey experiments in representative samples of the German electorate (N>15,000). The electorate is divided, with a plurality opposing tuition. Providing information on the university earnings premium raises support for tuition by 7 percentage points, turning the plurality in favor. The opposition-reducing effect persists two weeks after treatment. Information on fiscal costs and unequal access does not affect public preferences. We subject the baseline result to various experimental tests of replicability, robustness, heterogeneity, and consequentiality.

Keywords: tuition; higher education; information; earnings premium; public opinion; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 H52 I22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9102.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Earnings information and public preferences for university tuition: Evidence from representative experiments (2023)
Working Paper: Earnings Information and Public Preferences for University Tuition: Evidence from Representative Experiments (2021)
Working Paper: Earnings Information and Public Preferences for University Tuition: Evidence from Representative Experiments (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9102

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().