Kosten und Nutzen der Ausbildung an Tertiärbildungsinstitutionen im Vergleich

Abstract

We compare German institutions of tertiary education (universities and polytechnics with respect to the cost of and the returns to their educational degrees. Based on cost data from two different sources we find that on average the expenditures of universities are lower than those of polytechnics when we consider expenditures per potential enrollee and per student enrolled during the regular education period. We apply data from the German Socioeconomic Panel (2001-2007) to estimate the private returns to tertiary education and find higher returns to university than polytechnic training. These results are robust to a variety of alternative procedures.