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Parental background and university dropout in Italy

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Abstract

Using longitudinal data drawn from the European Community Household Panel, this paper examines Italian university entry and dropout rates in the context of specific parental and family characteristics. We are interested in the effects of the household’s cultural and financial conditions on shaping investment in tertiary education and its failure, at the national level. Our estimates confirm the persistence of intergenerational correlations related to education. Cultural constraints affect outcomes—enrolment in and withdrawal from tertiary education; low income negatively affects the transition from high school to college. Our results suggest that a comprehensive policy intervention is needed to ensure optimal human capital investment.

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Notes

  1. ISTAT (2000).

  2. Pre 1969, access to university was allowed to only individuals holding an academic-oriented secondary school qualification (i.e. licei). Individuals holding technical and professional high school diploma have only been allowed to enrol for a university degree course since the introduction of law n.910/69.

  3. In 2000, university survival rates were lowest in Italy (42 %) compared to an OECD average of 70 % (70 % for Germany, 59 % for France and 83 % for the UK).

  4. Italian subsidies for education to private entities as a percentage of GDP were of 0.15 in 2000, while the OECD mean was 0.24 % (OECD 2003).

  5. For a comprehensive description of the Italian tertiary education system after the introduction of the 2001 reform, see Bratti et al. (2008) and Bratti et al. (2010).

  6. It should be noted that family income in this study refers to resources available at the time of transitions rather than parental income during the child’s late adolescent years. It has been shown that children in financially well off families during their formative years have greater exposure to higher quality education and experience environments that foster cognitive and non-cognitive skills (Carneiro and Heckman 2002).

  7. These authors show that undergraduates with good final high school grades are more likely to dropout.

  8. The ECHP survey was discontinued after 2001.

  9. In this manner, we control for the resources available given family characteristics.

  10. In ECHP, data individuals are already identified by grouping some regions—it includes 11 geographical areas.

  11. Average unemployment rates during the sample period were about 6.6 % in the north-west, 5.3 % in the north-east, 7.6 % in central Italy and 16 % in the south.

  12. Under the assumption of ‘proportional hazard’, the duration profile of the hazard is the only function of the time variable and, therefore, is the same for all individuals where the profile is shifted upwards or downwards by the explanatory variables.

  13. ‘Rho’ is the ratio of the heterogeneity variance to 1 plus the heterogeneity variance.

  14. The highest percentage of university enrolment after high school completion is also due to the specific Italian situation, where there is a limited differentiation in higher education programmes. The situation changed slightly after the introduction of the new university reform ‘3 + 2’, which also encouraged enrolment by individuals with less time to devote to study, such as workers and older individuals.

  15. For example in the academic year 1998–1999, according to geographical macro-area of residence, freshmen were about 19.64 % from the north-western, 15.37 % from the north-eastern, 20.83 % from the centre and 44.16 % from the southern Italy.

  16. The estimation results correspond to the model without unobserved heterogeneity as the hypothesis that rho is zero cannot be rejected (i.e. frailty is unimportant).

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Acknowledgments

I thank the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER—University of Essex) for the data. Individual thanks for useful comments are due to Lorenzo Cappellari, Giorgia Casalone, Mark Bryan, Marco Francesconi, David Haardt, Stephen Jenkins and Cheti Nicoletti and to two anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Department of Economics, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale, via Perrone, 18, 28100, Novara, Italy

    Carmen Aina

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Aina, C. Parental background and university dropout in Italy. High Educ 65, 437–456 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9554-z

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