How tuition fees affected student enrollment at higher education institutions: the aftermath of a German quasi-experiment

Journal for Labour Market Research

Table 3 Effect of temporary tuition fee charges on the log of enrollments at public higher education institutions

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Public tuition fee charging [dummy]	− 0.0353^***	− 0.0828^***	− 0.0645^***	− 0.0695^***
Public tuition fee charging [dummy]	(− 3.85)	(− 6.69)	(− 5.70)	(− 6.47)
Upper secondary school graduates [in thousands]	0.0122^***	0.0035^***	0.0037^***	0.0033^***
Upper secondary school graduates [in thousands]	(14.93)	(5.32)	(8.40)	(7.26)
Unemployment rate [percentage]		0.0258^***	− 0.0240^***	− 0.0211^**
Unemployment rate [percentage]		(4.96)	(− 4.58)	(− 2.51)
Vocational training contracts acquired		0.0000^***	0.0000	− 0.0000
Vocational training contracts acquired		(5.02)	(0.08)	(− 0.58)
Gross domestic product [per capita]		− 0.0000^***	− 0.0000	− 0.0000
Gross domestic product [per capita]		(− 8.89)	(− 1.44)	(− 0.00)
Proportion of bachelor-degrees and master-degrees		0.0080^***	0.0076^***	0.0090^***
Proportion of bachelor-degrees and master-degrees		(14.90)	(10.69)	(7.76)
One year lead in treatment				0.0007
One year lead in treatment				(0.06)
Two year lead in treatment				− 0.0250
Two year lead in treatment				(− 1.23)
One year lag of graduates [in thousands]				0.0010^***
One year lag of graduates [in thousands]				(3.44)
Two year lag of graduates [in thousands]				0.0003
Two year lag of graduates [in thousands]				(0.88)
Federal state specific year trend			✓	✓
Observations	3,296	3,296	3,296	2,472
R² (within)	0.1963	0.3617	0.4086	0.4465

Coefficients of Fixed effects regression with cluster robust standard errors (institutional level); Model (1) is a baseline model, (2) adds covariates to control for reforms and economic conditions, (3) considers state-specific time trends and (4) is the full model under consideration of dynamic effects;
t statistics in parentheses; ^*p < 0.1, ^**p < 0.05, ^***p < 0.01