Preferences for undergraduate university programs in Sri Lanka: evidence from a costless application system.

This paper examines the factors influencing preferences for undergraduate study using administrative data on applications to the state university system of Sri Lanka, which is characterized by centralized administration, rule-based admissions, and virtually costless applications. The feature of costless applications implies that students are unconstrained from listing out all the programs for which they wish to be considered, while the rule-based nature of admissions makes it possible to identify the exact program choice set available to each applicant. Using the constructed choice sets, I estimate a conditional logit model including measures of institutional and program quality and academic and social matching between the student and the programs to which they are eligible. The results suggest that applicants prefer programs that are more closely matched to their ability and demographic profile, though there is some heterogeneity across genders, socio-economic status, and ability. Among the measures of institutional quality, students prefer those related to the quality of teaching, such as faculty qualifications and student teacher ratios, over the quality of research. These findings have important implications for policymakers and managers aiming to propose and develop new programs or improve the quality of existing programs and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]