Earnings information and public preferences for university tuition: Evidence from representative experiments

Philipp Lergetporer and Ludger Woessmann

Journal of Public Economics, 2023, vol. 226, issue C

Abstract: Higher education finance depends on the public’s preferences for charging tuition, which may be partly based on beliefs and awareness 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. While there is some evidence of information-based updating of biased beliefs, the effect seems to mainly work through increased salience which triggers reduced consideration of financial constraints when forming preferences for tuition. 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: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272723001500
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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)
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:eee:pubeco:v:226:y:2023:i:c:s0047272723001500

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104968

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().