Professor Jorge Rodríguez got his paper “Is Private Education Worth It? Evidence from School-to-Work Transitions” accepted for publication in Labor Economics. In this project, which is join work with Dante Contreras (University of Chile) and Sergio Urzua (University of Maryland), the authors explore the impact of attending private versus public secondary schools. The paper shows that attending a private secondary schools significantly increase average earnings in adulthood. Indeed, individuals who attended a private secondary school earn up to an additional USD 144 per month in comparison to their peers who attended a public secondary school.
The article investigates what is behind these differences and concludes that they are not totally driven by academic differences. Indeed, Professor Rodriguez notes that “While private schools do improve students’ learning, there seem to also generate differences in non-academic, non-cognitive dimensions such as soft skills, discipline, and better networking opportunities for future employment.”
Professor Rodríguez is part of the School of Business and Economics at Universidad de los Andes, Chile. His work focuses on early childhood, economics of education and labor economics. The full article is available in this link.
