Students' Behavioural Responses to a Fallback Option: Evidence from Introducing Interim Degrees in German Schools

Natalie Obergruber and Larissa Zierow ()

No 11732, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Without a school degree, students can have difficulty in the labor market. To improve the lives of upper-secondary school dropouts, German states instituted a school reform that awarded an interim degree to high-track students upon completion of Grade 9. Using retrospective spell data on school and labor market careers from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), our difference-in-differences approach exploits the staggered implementation of this reform between 1965 and 1982. As intended, the reform reduced switching between school tracks. Surprisingly, it also increased successful high-track completion, university entrance rates, and later income, arguably by reducing the perceived risk of trying longer in the high-track school.

Keywords: school tracking; school degree; school dropout (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2018-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Economics of Education Review, 2020, 75, 101956

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Related works:
Journal Article: Students’ behavioural responses to a fallback option - Evidence from introducing interim degrees in german schools (2020)
Working Paper: Students' behavioural responses to a fallback option - Evidence from introducing interim degrees in german schools (2020)
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