Equality of Opportunity in Access to Higher Education

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Equality of opportunity is considered by many a basic human right. It is achieved when everybody can reach their full potential, and nobody is limited by the circumstances of their own birth. However, today millions of youths around the world face persistent gaps in opportunity. This is both a social and an economic issue, because economic potential is lost when many of our youth do not have access to safe environments, high quality education and employment opportunities.This project focuses on ways to eradicate disparities in education and their consequences for labour market opportunities. In particular, it uses data from innovative inclusion policies in Chile, a country characterized by high income inequality, to find ways to close these opportunity gaps early on, i.e., before university enrolment and labour market entry. The goal of this research is not only to provide a scientific evaluation of educational policies in Chile, but also to draw practical public policy lessons that can be useful to any country. To achieve this, the project combines exceptionally detailed data with structural modelling. Most of the data have already been or will be collected by the Chilean Ministry of Education in Chile. They will be complemented with a small data collection carried out by the candidate at a minimal cost, leveraging on established relationships with research users in-country. Structural modelling is the analysis of the mechanisms through which policies work. It is what allows us to extrapolate, from specific contexts, general conclusions that are applicable to many countries. The project addresses three related research questions. First, it evaluates an affirmative action programme called PACE (Programa de Acceso Efectivo y Acompanamiento a la Educacion Superior), which guarantees admission to university to the best students in disadvantaged high schools in Chile. The study will use a Randomized Control Trial that exploits the planned programme roll-out to scientifically evaluate programme effectiveness and to identify the key ingredients for inclusion policy success. Second, it determines if differences exist in the effectiveness of the pilot programme for PACE, the Propedeutico programme, between high schools that do and that do not stream students of similar ability into the same classes. In doing so, the study extends our understanding of the role of tracking and peers in the production of achievement. For example, findings will determine if students compete more fiercely for university admission when they are in classrooms with similar peers. Third, it evaluates the impact of higher education on disadvantaged youth. To do so, it uses cut-off rules for university admission to apply a policy evaluation technique known as regression discontinuity. The benefits of higher education on the academic and labour market outcomes of disadvantaged youths are not well understood because very few poor students are observed enrolling in university. Because these are the very students that inclusion policies target, evaluating the benefits for them is of paramount importance for policy makers and researchers. This project's goal is to maximise the returns of investing in the lives of young people. This not only reduces the vast human cost of inequality, but it also increases aggregate earnings and economic growth. Due to the candidate's network in academia and in the public sector in Chile (including in the Chilean Ministry of Education), the results of the study can have a direct and immediate impact on the educational policy discourse in Chile. Over the years, the Chilean Governments have shown willingness to enact reforms that have a strong evidence-base. Therefore, potentially hundreds of thousands of poor children in Chile can be directly affected in the short term. Other countries could then follow the Chilean example, amplifying the potential impact to millions of underprivileged and talented children around the world.