• DOI:10.2139/ssrn.4166635
• Corpus ID: 250699234

Do School Reforms Shape Study Behavior at University? Evidence From an Instructional Time Reform

@article{Schwerter2022DoSR,
  title={Do School Reforms Shape Study Behavior at University? Evidence From an Instructional Time Reform},
  author={Jakob Schwerter and Nicolai Netz and Nicolas Hubner},
  journal={SSRN Electronic Journal},
  year={2022}
}

• Jakob Schwerter, Nicolai Netz, Nicolas Hubner
• Published 20 July 2022
• Education
• SSRN Electronic Journal

Early-life environments can have long-lasting developmental effects. Interestingly, research on how school reforms affect later-life study behavior has hardly adopted this perspective. Therefore, we investigated a staggered school reform that reduced the number of school years and increased weekly instructional time for secondary school students in most German federal states. We analyzed this quasi-experiment in a difference-in-differences framework using representative large-scale survey data on 71,426 students who attended university between 1998 and 2016. We found negative effects of reform exposure on hours spent attending classes and on self-study, and a larger time gap between school completion and higher education entry. Our results support the view that research should examine unintended long-term effects of school reforms on individual life courses.