Environmental shocks and higher education: How did an earthquake and air pollution influence college access and graduate mobility?
- Dr. Po YANG, Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China
- Dr. Wei LU, Hangzhou Normal University, China
- Ms. Yulian CAO, Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China
- Mr. Zekai ZHONG, Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China
- CHAIR: Lili Yang, University of Oxford
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The quest for the innovation-driven growth has motivated nation states, regions, and cities competing for higher education graduates with favorable admission and graduate employment policies. However, environmental shocks are controversial factors which push college applicants and graduates away from particular localities. These shocks provide rare opportunities to identify causal drivers for domestic mobility of college students.
In this talk, we will discuss the effect of environmental shocks in China using the national college entrance examination database and graduate surveys. The first two studies utilized the difference-in-difference model to estimate the effect of a severe earthquake, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province. The studies report a negative and significant impact of the earthquake on local high school graduates’ National College Entrance Examination standard scores. The earthquake lowered the prospective students’ access to elite colleges and opportunities to pursue a major in a high-salary field. For college graduates, the earthquake exposure increased one’s mobility out of Sichuan. The third study finds that air pollution in college towns pushed graduates into pursuing employment in cities with better air quality, due to health awareness, the opportunity effect and the welfare effect.
The talk will add to current understanding of the impact of natural disasters on higher education and domestic mobility of college graduates.
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Dr. Po YANG is a tenured associate professor at Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China. She is the chair of Department of Economics of Education and Administration. Her research interests focus on college student development and employment, and higher education and vocational education finance.
Dr. Wei LU is a lecturer in economics of education in the school of education at Hangzhou Normal University. He earned his Ph.D. from Peking University in 2020. His research interests focus on human capital investment, particularly in household spending on private supplementary tutoring.
Ms. Yulian CAO is a Ph.D student at Graduate School of Education, Peking University. She is interested in the long-term impact of natural disasters on human capital accumulation and the effectiveness of online learning.
Mr. Zekai ZHONG is a Ph.D student at China Institute for Education Finance Research, Peking University. He is interested in financing for scientific research and evaluation of science funding programs.
Lili (杨力苈) is a post-doctoral researcher at CGHE and works on CGHE Project 8, ‘Local and global public good of higher education: 10 nation study. Previously, she worked as a PhD researcher on the Global Higher Education Engagement Programme of CGHE. Lili obtained her PhD from University of Oxford in 2020. Her thesis, which will be published as a book, conceptually explores similarities and differences between notions of “public (good)” in Chinese and liberal Anglo-American traditions, and the implications for higher education.
