Premia płacowa z wykształcenia wyższego według kierunku studiów
Wage Premium From Higher Education by Field of Study

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to propose and econometrically verify a new method of modelling educational decisions regarding the choice of educational tracks. The analysis of potential benefits from education is extended beyond the traditional approach by taking into consideration, apart from wage premium, also non-financial factors, e.g. social status or the lifestyle combined with the job. Inclusion of both financial and nonfinancial return to education allows for a comprehensive explanation of educational decisions taken by individual agents. The proposed way of modelling educational decisions is an extension to the model proposed by Mahseredjian, Cannings, Montmarquette (2002), by including a vector representing the expected non-financial return to education, weighted by the probability of being employed. The decomposition of the individual expected return to higher education into a financial and a non-financial part allows to avoid the bias in the estimation of the parameter representing the remuneration increase attributable to the subsequent years of studies. For the purposes of the empirical verification of the proposed model, typology of the major fields of study in the Polish educational market was prepared, based on the literature review and available database. The model was partly tested by the application of Mincerian equation, and the hypothesis about the influence of college majors on the financial return to education was confirmed. Estimations show that the highest future financial benefits are yielded by science and engineering, which is a good hint both for university candidates and policymakers. The initial analysis of the results has confirmed the expectations of the authors. It is the first step towards a full econometric verification of the proposed model.

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