Determinants of college mismatch in a rule-based admission system: The case of Sri Lanka

Tiloka de Silva

International Journal of Educational Development, 2025, vol. 118, issue C

Abstract: A good match between a student and the higher education program into which they enrol can have significant gains for the student as well as the economy at large. Mismatches can take place for many reasons including lack of information, funding constraints, preferences for features of an institution aside from the purely academic, etc. This paper uses unique administrative data on university applications to state universities in Sri Lanka to study academic mismatch within a context of rule-based admissions and a system characterised by an affirmative action policy (district quota) that reserves close to 60 % of seats. The paper measures the extent of mismatch in the Sri Lankan context and aims to identify determinants of the mismatch using multinomial logit regression. Results suggest that there is significant mismatch when considering a broader measure of program quality than just entrance test scores, even though admissions are rule-based and application and tuition fees are negligible and uniform across programs. Undermatching decreases with socio-economic status while over-matching increases – access to information, geographical isolation, preferences for social/cultural similarity and the district quota are all strongly associated with deviations from academic matching.

Keywords: Academic mismatch; Undermatching; Affirmative action; Preferences; Rule-based admissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:injoed:v:118:y:2025:i:c:s0738059325002032

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2025.103405

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