Abstract
This paper seeks to determine whether the introduction of new degrees under the European Higher Education Area has brought about any improvement in students’ performance, based on an extended concept of performance and an analysis of the core values and distribution tails, i.e. distinguishing between the improvements achieved by excellent students and by average students. Quantile regression analysis is combined with a least squeres ordinaries (OLS) approach to estimate students’ performance. This method is able to capture the extreme behaviour at both tails of students’ performance distribution. An empirical study is conducted on students’ grades in the subject Business Management: Introduction at the University of the Basque Country (Spain). Our principal finding is that although OLS estimation indicates that there is no significant improvement in students’ performance, the results for quantile regression show that in the 25 % quantile final grades increase significantly, while in the extreme deciles (95 %) their performance decrease.
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Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge financial support from FESIDE Foundation, Econometrics Research Group (Basque Government grant IT-642-13), and Educational Innovation Project (University of the Basque Country PIE-6380)-University of the Basque Country.
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Fernández-Sainz, A., García-Merino, J.D., Urionabarrenetxea-Zabalandikoetxea, S. (2014). Students’ Performance with the Introduction of the Bologna Process: An Approach Via Quantile Regression. In: Peris-Ortiz, M., Garrigós-Simón, F., Gil Pechuán, I. (eds) Innovation and Teaching Technologies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04825-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04825-3_8
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