Co-educational, non-elite schools: the Bank of Italy’s formula for attracting more university students

Good grades alone aren’t enough to decide whether to go to university: it also matters who sits next to you in class and – perhaps surprisingly – who your classmates’ parents are.

This is the finding of a study by the Bank of Italia: a one-percentage-point increase in the proportion of schoolmates with at least one parent who holds a university degree raises the probability of enrolling at university by 0.06 per cent. Taking into account an increase of one standard deviation (17.7 points), the effect rises to one percentage point, based on an average probability of enrolment of 55 per cent. To put this into perspective: a 10 per cent increase in the proportion of classmates with a parent who holds a university degree is equivalent, assuming the group size remains the same, to almost a fifth (18 per cent) of the direct effect of having a father who holds a university degree.

However, the educational qualifications of classmates’ parents are not enough on their own. The study breaks down the effect by employment status: when classmates’ parents with a university degree are unemployed or in manual labour, the positive impact disappears statistically.

However, the effect becomes strong and significant (0.085 compared with 0.063 for the aggregate figure) when a degree is combined with a white-collar job. Conversely, having many classmates whose parents do not hold a school-leaving certificate reduces the probability of enrolment: -0.069 points for every percentage point of exposure.

The effect is not linear: it increases up to the middle deciles of the distribution, then slows at the highest levels. In short: the authors suggest that a mixed school population – with a balanced mix of families from different backgrounds – leads to higher overall enrolment figures than a polarised system. The peer effect is also more pronounced in non-sixth-form colleges and amongst pupils whose parents do not hold a university degree – that is, precisely where the baseline propensity to continue one’s education is lowest.