Jaime Andrés Sarmiento Espinel

Quality differences of higher education and its determinants in a less-developed country

Two key measures to determine the quality of higher education are the performance of students and the accreditation of a programme’s quality. We analyse the difference in the distributions of the student’s scores in a standardised test of economics knowledge between accredited and non-accredited undergraduate economics programmes in a less-developed country. We estimate what the distribution of scores in non-accredited programmes would have been if their students possessed the characteristics of students in accredited programmes. The scores come from the Colombian National Exam of Higher Education in economics, while student, family, programme and institutional information is built from a survey held before the test. The score distributions indicate better performance in quality-accredited economics programmes compared to non-accredited programmes. Results suggest that individual characteristics explain the larger part of the quality gap, while family features contribute the least. The programme and insti...Two key measures to determine the quality of higher education are the performance of students and the accreditation of a programme’s quality. We analyse the difference in the distributions of the student’s scores in a standardised test of economics knowledge between accredited and non-accredited undergraduate economics programmes in a less-developed country. We estimate what the distribution of scores in non-accredited programmes would have been if their students possessed the characteristics of students in accredited programmes. The scores come from the Colombian National Exam of Higher Education in economics, while student, family, programme and institutional information is built from a survey held before the test. The score distributions indicate better performance in quality-accredited economics programmes compared to non-accredited programmes. Results suggest that individual characteristics explain the larger part of the quality gap, while family features contribute the least. The programme and institutional characteristics have opposing impacts, mainly around the mean of the score distribution.