@article{265c469dfe3b4511afbd6a4f9f764c09,
title = "Do wage expectations predict college enrollment? Evidence from healthcare",
abstract = "We study the effect of ex ante expected wages rather than realized wages on the decision to pursue a nursing college education in Switzerland. On average, wage expectations reflect observed market wages, but with large dispersion among individuals. We collected data from a full cohort of healthcare trainees in their third year of training on upper-secondary level. Those trainees who expected a greater return from nursing college (tertiary level) were more likely to enroll in nursing college later on; the effect is substantial and almost orthogonal to individuals{\textquoteright} characteristics. This indicates that policies that increase returns from studying nursing can indeed attract new students to reduce the shortage of nurses. Subjective ex ante wage expectation data are useful in predicting the decision to enroll in college.",
keywords = "College enrollment, Fractional regression, Nursing, Subjective expectations, Training, Wage",
author = "Juerg Schweri and Joop Hartog",
note = "Funding Information: The authors thank two anonymous referees, Andreas Kuhn, Blaise Melly, Ines Trede and participants at the following conferences for helpful comments: QURE (Reus, Spain), IWAEE (Catanzaro, Italy; in particular Todd Stinebrickner), Economics of study choice (Marbach Castle, Germany; in particular Peter Arcidiacono), Verein f{\"u}r Socialpolitik (Hamburg, Germany; in particular Uschi Backes-Gellner and Jens Mohrenweiser), VET Congress (Zollikofen, Switzerland). Part of the work on this paper was done while Schweri was a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam and at the University of Bern. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding for the survey by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education , Research and Innovation (SERI) and organizational support from OdASant{\'e} in the field survey . Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 Elsevier B.V. Copyright: Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.",
year = "2017",
month = sep,
doi = "10.1016/j.jebo.2017.06.010",
language = "English",
volume = "141",
pages = "135--150",
journal = "Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization",
issn = "0167-2681",
publisher = "Elsevier",
}
