Title: The role of schools in shaping university careers: Evidence from Italy Authors:  Mariano Porcu - University of Cagliari (Italy)
Isabella Sulis - University of Cagliari (Italy)
Cristian Usala - University of Cagliari (Italy) [presenting]
Abstract: The aim is to investigate how schools influence students' careers at the university by focusing on their academic status at the beginning of their second year of careers. High school's impact is modelled by using the MOBYSU.IT database on the population of students enrolled in an Italian university between 2015 and 2018. In particular, a two-step approach is applied to account for the role played by other confounding factors related to students' characteristics, disciplinary fields, and socio-economic conditions of the areas. The first step entails two fixed-effects regressions to estimate the average effect of schools and disciplinary fields on the number of credits earned by students during their first year. This step derives two indirect indicators: one measuring schools' effectiveness in providing students with the necessary competencies and one providing insights into the difficulty level of the chosen field and program. In the second step, a multinomial logit model is estimated to evaluate the effect of schools on students' probability of being regulars, at risk of dropout, dropouts, and changing degree programs and/or universities while controlling for a wide set of covariates. The results show a significant and positive school effect on students' university careers.