Übergänge zwischen hochschulischer und beruflicher Bildung aus der Perspektive von Studierenden und Studienabbrechenden

Dörsam, M. & Vogel, C. | 2019 | lernen & lehren, Heft 134, 34. Jahrgang, 2/2019, S. 64 - 72

Die Debatte um die Durchlässigkeit zwischen hochschulischer und beruflicher Bildung wurde lange einseitig, mit Blick auf den Übergang von der beruflichen in die hochschulische Bildung geführt. Mit zunehmender Akademisierung, dem gleichzeitigen Rückgang neu abgeschlossener Ausbildungsverträge sowie Passungsproblemen am Ausbildungsmarkt rückte die Steigerung der Attraktivität der beruflichen Bildung in den vergangenen Jahren zunehmend in den Fokus. Eine bedeutende Zielgruppe stellt in diesem Zusammenhang die Gruppe der Studienabbrecher/-innen dar. Wie diese noch besser für die Berufsbildung gewonnen werden kann und welche neuen Bildungsformate die Attraktivität des Berufsbildungssystems stärken können, wird in diesem Artikel aufgezeigt und diskutiert.

The Effect of a Compressed High School Curriculum on University Performance

Dörsam, M. & Lauber, V. | 2019 | Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, Konstanz: University of Konstanz

A recent education reform in Germany reduced the duration of academic high school education by one year but left the curriculum, and total class time unchanged. We use a unique data set of university students to investigate the effects of this reduction in years of schooling on academic achievements at the tertiary level. By exploiting variation in the implementation of the reform across school types over time, we isolate the reform effect from cohort, state, and school type effects. Our results suggest that the reform lowers the opportunity costs of schooling and facilitates an earlier labor market entry as we find no detrimental effects while students are one year younger on average.

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Accountability in Higher Education: The Impact of High-Stakes Testing on Academic Achievement

Dörsam, M. & Brox, E. | 2018 | Konferenzbeitrag, European Society for Population Economics

Aiming to increase student accountability, many governments have implemented policies to improve study success. One of the most common policies is high-stakes testing. In parts of Germany, first-year undergraduates have to pass so-called ’orientation exams’ to be eligible to continue a program. In the first part of the paper we investigate the causal effect of the introduction of the policy on early dropout. In the second part, we use plausible exogenous variation in failing the first attempt of such an orientation exam to assess the causal impact of high-stake testing on subsequent academic achievement. Applying a regression discontinuity design, we find that being exposed to a high-stake exam increases the probability to drop out of a program in the first year by 16 to 19 percentage points. This effect diminishes over time but persists until the end of their studies, as we still find a 10 to 13 percentage points difference in the probability to graduate, showing the difficulty of such a policy in choosing the right standard.

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