Education expansion and decline in cohort quality in Brazil: 1995–2013

ABSTRACT

This letter explores whether the expansion of tertiary education in Brazil has caused any significant decline in the average quality of the recent cohorts with higher share of tertiary education. Using Brazil National Household Survey 1995–2013 data, we find evidence shows that the recent cohorts earn a relatively smaller tertiary premium after controlling everything else that also affect the tertiary premium, which indicates the decline in average quality of the recent college graduates.

KEYWORDS:

• Education expansion
• average cohort quality
• tertiary premium
• Brazil

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• I20
• J24
• J31

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The processing of data follows DeLong, Goldin and Katz (2003).