Educational intentions, cognitive skills and earnings expectations of French undergraduates

Abstract

This article aims to study the earnings expectations of first-year students at a French university. Our findings highlight the importance of the environment in which students make their choices about education. Expected earnings are proportionally higher when their parents seem to be involved in the careers guidance, taking into account the effect of parental socio-economic status. The positive opinion of parents about the orientation or the connection between the discipline and the father’s occupation are generally associated with higher earnings. In addition, our results show a strong impact of cognitive variables which are far more significant than variables relating to past educational performances.

Keywords:

• wage expectations
• cognitive skills
• first year students
• LIML estimation

JEL Classifications:

• J24
• I20

Notes

¹  Information covering the two survey phases was available for 169 students.

²  The F-test on the excluded instruments is larger than the Stock-Yogo 5% value for the weak identification, based on LIML size. The tests of overidentifying restrictions show that the instruments are correctly specified.

³  To control possible selection bias we estimated a probit to control non responses between two samples, which enabled us to calculate a Mills inverse ratio. As this was not significant, it seems there was no selection bias.

⁴  The indicators from these tests are response times in milliseconds, the best performances are therefore the lowest values. The other tests were not included in the model as they were not significant.