The Impact of High School on University Performance: The Relationship of High School Quality and its Characteristics to the Cumulative Average of its Graduates in the First Semester of the Preparatory Year at Taibah University
Keywords:
High school, univesity performance, qualityAbstract
The current study investigates the impact of high school on university performance of students, using survey data of 1,795 freshmen combined with data of student record at the admission office of Taibah University. Controlling for previous achievement as well as personal and socio-economic characteristics of students, urban schools outperformed rural schools by a quarter of a point of GPA (one third of the standard deviation). Graduates of public schools outperformed graduates of private schools; perhaps because private schools focus on short-term goals, such as admission standards more than the long-run success at university. School facilities were ineffective, since schools owning purpose-built buildings added no advantages to their graduates compared to schools operating in leasing buildings. Quality of school teachers, as perceived by students, was correlated with university performance, for all of school teachers and the math teacher but not the English Language teacher. Graduates of schools following a course-based mode of study did better than graduates of the traditional high schools. The most compelling evidence on school quality comes from the fixed-effect estimates. An average student graduating from any of the schools at the top 10% on the value-added ranking of schools can achieve 1.24 standard deviations (if he is a male) and 1.15 standard deviations (if she is a female) higher than an average graduate of schools that are ranked at the lowest 10%.
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