The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ transition from high school to post-secondary education

COVID-19大流行是否会影响高中生的教育期望和决定？ COVID-19大流行是否会加剧从学校到工作过渡中的社会不平等？回答这些问题很重要，主要有两个原因：首先，研究明确表明，毕业时的教育决定会产生长期的经济和非经济后果。其次，如果2019冠状病毒病大流行扭曲了教育预期，导致高中生放弃或改变最初喜欢的教育计划，这可能会造成高昂的个人和社会成本。我们的项目将采用跨学科的方法，结合经济学和社会学的观点，分析高中生的期望在COVID-19大流行期间是如何发展的，以及它如何影响高中生向高等教育的过渡。此外，我们的提案将调查COVID-19大流行造成的父母劳动力市场冲击对学校向工作过渡的影响。此外，一项析因调查实验将调查潜在的教育支持政策（例如，容易获得财政支持）是否能减轻COVID-19大流行造成的不利不安全影响。在我们的分析中，我们将使用来自德国八个联邦州的2020年和2021年毕业队列的8000名高中生的独特面板数据集，其中包括2019冠状病毒病大流行之前和期间（以及可能之后）的信息。家长调查和注册信息将丰富学生数据。利用这些数据，我们的研究回答了以下问题：1。新冠肺炎疫情期间，不同社会背景高中生的教育期望和决策发生了怎样的变化？2. Covid-19大流行引发的父母劳动力市场不安全感是否会影响高中生的教育期望和教育决策？3. 新冠肺炎疫情期间，教育支持政策能否缓解高中生不安全感对教育预期的影响？在回答这些问题时，我们的建议将增加对COVID-19大流行的成本、其对社会不平等的影响以及减少这些成本的潜在政策的全面了解。

Does the COVID-19 pandemic influence educational expectations and decisions of high school students and does the COVID-19 pandemic increase social inequalities in the school-to-work transition? Answering these questions is important because of two main reasons: First, research unambiguously shows that educational decisions at the end of school have long-lasting pecuniary and non-pecuniary consequences. Second, if the COVID-19 pandemic distorts educational expectations in a way that high school students abandon or change initially preferred educational plans, this may cause high individual and societal costs.Our project will analyse in an interdisciplinary approach that combines economic and sociological perspectives how high school student’s expectations develop over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it affects transitions of high school students into post-secondary education. In addition, our proposal will investigate the role of parental labour market shocks due to the COVID-19 pandemic on school to work transitions. Furthermore, a factorial survey experiment will investigate whether potential educational support policies (e.g., easy access to financial support) mitigate adverse insecurity effects due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For our analysis, we will use a unique panel data set on 8,000 high school students from the graduation cohorts 2020 and 2021 from eight German Federal States with information before and during (and potentially after) the COVID-19 pandemic. The student data will be enriched with parental survey and register information. Using this data, our research answers the following questions: 1. How do educational expectations and decisions of high school students with different social backgrounds change during the COVID-19 pandemic? 2. Does the Covid-19 pandemic induced parental labour market insecurity affect educational expectations and educational decisions of high school students? 3. Can educational support policies buffer the effect of high school student’s insecurity on educational expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic?In answering these questions, our proposal will add comprehensive knowledge on costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, its effect on social inequality and potential policies to reduce these costs.