Duration of the Transition from Regular Basic Education to Higher Education in Peru

Abstract

The dynamics of the transitions from regular basic education to higher education are analyzed in order to measure and characterize the degree of disconnection between the two training stages. Survival methods were used to predict higher education entry rates for recent high school graduates, addressing the issue of data censorship. It has been found that about 30% of young people transition to higher education in the second year after completing high school, then the rate of admission grows over the years until reaching 67.1% at the end of the process. The risk of dropping out of full secondary status and moving on to tertiary education is higher if moving on to university education and privately run institutions. In addition, there is evidence of a continuous process with respect to educational management, since graduating from private schools offers greater probabilities of transition to HE of the same management. On the other hand, the greater human capital of the parents translates into greater human capital for the children, this is invariant to the type of higher education that the young people go through. Instead, the role of socioeconomic conditions turns out to be significant only for the transition to universities and private institutions, while cognitive skills fail to explain entry into private management. Additionally, gender gaps are favorable for women, a consistent result across the different models evaluated, while labor participation turns out to be less restrictive for entry to non-university education and private institutions.