Centre for Economic and Regional Studies Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence

Start: 05/24/2018 14:00

End: 05/24/2018 16:00

Location: MTA Reserach House, Budapest, 4 Tóth Kálmán street, ground floor, room K13

Description

Koen Declerq (KU Leuven)
Gender differences in applying for STEM programs in higher education: evidence from a policy shift in Hungary (with Júlia Varga)

Abstract
We study how admission policies differently affect enrollment decisions of men and women and how these policies can increase enrollment of women in STEM programs. We apply our analysis to Hungary, where 44% of men and only 11% of women preferred a STEM program in their first year in higher education. We investigate how a policy reform that limited access to subsidized non-STEM programs, differently affected application decisions of men and women. We find that the reform reduced the number of students applying to higher education, and especially discouraged participation of women. After the reform, more men and women applied to STEM programs or non-subsidized non-STEM programs in which they have to pay tuition fees. This latter effect is more larger for women. We proceed by estimating a structural model to analyze how the responsiveness to admission probabilities in application decisions differs between men and women, and find that women are more sensitive to admission probabilities. We estimate the model on a sample before the policy reform and externally validate the model on the cohort affected by the reform. Finally, we use the model to simulate the impact of alternative admission policies on enrollment in STEM programs.