Do Students Care More about their Major or their University's Reputation? Evidence from Taiwan's Joint College Entrance Examination

Author: Hung-Lin Tao(Department of Economics,Soochow University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 49, No. 2
Date：October 2004
Pages：113-132
DOI：10.3966/2073753X2004104902006

Abstract：

This study used the JCEE entrance scores for each department of each university, from 1980 to 1996, to quantify the emphasis of students on the university's reputation and on their own major (departmental specialty). All sampled universities and departments were ranked by regression. The university rank and department rank were used to construct a hypothetical university first-ranking and a hypothetical department first-ranking. These two hypothetical rankings were then compared with the actual ranking to see whether students cared more about the university's reputation or their own intended major. Students were divided into 3 groups based on their majors. It was found that group 1 subjects cared about the university much more than the other two groups, while group 3 subjects cared more about their intended major. This study shows that the different preferences of different groups may be largely a reflection of students' choices to maximize their human-capital value in the future.

Keywords：Joint College Entrance Examination, university ranking, department ranking, human-capital investment

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