Implementing quotas in university admissions: An experimental analysis

Dorothea Kübler, Sebastian Braun, Nadja Dwenger and Alexander Westkamp

VfS Annual Conference 2012 (Goettingen): New Approaches and Challenges for the Labor Market of the 21st Century from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: Quotas for special groups of students often apply in school or university admission procedures. This paper studies the performance of two mechanisms to implement such quotas in a lab experiment. The fi rst mechanism is a simplifi ed version of the mechanism currently employed by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions, which first allocates seats in the quota for top-grade students before allocating all other seats among remaining applicants. The second is a modifi ed version of the student-proposing deferred acceptance (SDA) algorithm, which simultaneously allocates seats in all quotas. Our main result is that the current procedure, designed to give top-grade students an advantage, actually harms them, as students often fail to grasp the strategic issues involved. The modi ed SDA algorithm signifi cantly improves the matching for top-grade students and could thus be a valuable tool for redesigning university admissions in Germany.

JEL-codes: C78 C92 I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Implementing quotas in university admissions: An experimental analysis (2014)
Working Paper: Implementing quotas in university admissions: An experimental analysis (2012)
Working Paper: Implementing quotas in university admissions: An experimental analysis (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc12:62048

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