engleski

Examining the Efficiency of Croatian Higher Education: An Application of Student Attainment Modelling

Similar to other higher education (HE) systems in neighbouring countries, Croatian HE institutions (HEIs) are faced with remarkable increases in the number of students thus leading to increasing concerns over stretched out resources and possibly deteriorating educational quality. Although the Croatian government views education as a key element in the transition to a democratic society, it still needs to develop interpretable measures of education outcomes, such as student attainment, to monitor the efficiency of its education system. This paper presents an educational production function approach to test the significance of a complex set of factors on students’ attainment in Croatian HE. The novelty of this student attainment model is the inputs it uses and their relevance in the Croatian context. In a principal-agent framework, a student is a decision making unit choosing his/her effort level to maximise attainment. The principal is the HEI setting appropriate incentives to achieve its main goal of maximising educational outcomes. We use faculty-level data from one large Croatian HEI for students who enrolled on 4-year programs from 1994-2003. A set of variables is capturing student’ s personal characteristics, previous schooling, socio-economic background, peer effects, student effort and several other course related characteristics. The dependent variable is student’ s grade average at the first year of study and the model is specified using Ordinary Least Squares. The results indicate that peer influence and student effort levels have a positive statistically significant effect on student attainment along with studying a similar subject in secondary school and attending a gymnasium prior to enrolling to the HEI. Paying a tuition fee and enrolling to the HEI at a mature age have a negative effect on attainment. This type of information may enable a better assessment of the changes in HE environment and may lead to a better understanding of the possible effects of policy changes in Croatian HE.

Education production; efficiency; student attainment; peer effects

nije evidentirano