The Value of a Degree

Maria A. Cattaneo, Christian Gschwendt and Stefan Wolter

No 247, Economics of Education Working Paper Series from University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW)

Abstract: The global rise in tertiary educational attainment has been attributed to various factors, most commonly higher expected earnings, improved protection against technological change, and prospects for upward social mobility. In a large-scale discrete-choice experiment with nearly 6,000 adults, we show that when these three factors are held constant, individuals show on average no additional intrinsic willingness to pay (WTP) for a university degree. Individuals are willing to forgo an amount of income roughly equivalent to the total cost of obtaining a university degree - including opportunity and direct costs-when trading off such a degree against basic vocational education. However, we observe significant heterogeneity depending on respondents' own educational attainment, gender and type of tertiary education: individuals with tertiary qualifications and men assign a higher value to higher education and the WTP is higher for university of applied degrees compared to academic university degrees.

Keywords: University; discrete choice experiment; willingness to pay; Switzerland (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I23 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-eur and nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iso:educat:0247

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