Looking ahead? The Role of Future Educational Opportunities on Pre-college Human Capital

Virna Vidal-Menezes

Can future schooling opportunities shape current educational decisions? In my main dissertation chapter, I exploit a large expansion in the supply of free post-secondary education in Brazil to assess whether and when exposure to new higher education institutions (HEI) shifts educational trajectories and pre-college attainment for local teenagers. I create a novel dataset using institutional documents and college websites, combined with rich administrative data, to examine the impact of receiving an HEI under this policy on local public students' test scores, high school enrollment, and high school graduation. I find that future educational opportunities positively impact pre-college educational attainment by changing the returns to schooling. I provide evidence of this mechanism by showing that: 1) high school graduation rates increase only in places where the college-premium was high pre-policy, and 2) the policy effectively increased the likelihood of lower-income, public school students to attend post-secondary education. This evidence is particularly important in low- and middle-income contexts where removing barriers to K-12 education (e.g., through free education policies) may not be enough to achieve universal attainment. Future educational opportunities might be key to increasing expected returns to primary and secondary education, and overall educational attainment in these settings. The remainder of my dissertation focuses on two other large-scale policies: the impacts of free primary education programs on schooling and political action in sub-Saharan Africa, and the effects of a Brazilian national inclusion policy for students with disabilities on K-12 enrollment and persistence.

About Virna Vidal-Menezes

Virna Vidal-Menezes is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Her research explores the broad impacts of expanding educational access in low- and middle-income countries, spanning outcomes such as educational attainment, political engagement, and the inclusion of students with disabilities. In her dissertation, she focuses on three large-scale, nationwide policies. In her main chapter, she examines how a national higher education expansion policy in Brazil shaped pre-college students' schooling choices. Her second chapter measures the impact of Free Primary Education in six Sub-Saharan African countries on educational attainment and political engagement. Her last chapter focuses on the impacts of an inclusion policy for students with disabilities on K-12 enrollment and persistence. Before joining Notre Dame, Virna earned a B.A. and M.A. in Economics at the Federal University of Ceará, in Fortaleza, Brazil, where she was born and raised. She has also worked with NGOs evaluating educational programs and interned in the Research Department at the Inter-American Development Bank. Last but not least: Virna loves dogs, especially the very long ones, and has a dachshund named Freddie.