College Choice and Career Prospect Information for Students and Parents in Bhutan

The information about future job prospects disaggregated by fields of tertiary education is provided to high school students and their parents.

The intervention will provide the information about the employment conditions of those 28–34 year old. The information is based on the Labor Force Surveys in 2018 and 2019. The information is disaggregated by the gender and the following education qualifications: Bachelors in Science, Math, Computer Science, and Agriculture; Bachelors in Engineering; Bachelors in Medicine, Health, and Nursing; Bachelors in Education; Bachelors in Business, Management, Economics, and Law; Bachelors in Arts, Humanities, and Social Studies; Technical Degrees (National Certificate II, III, Diploma) from Technical Training Institute (TTI) and Institute of Zorig Chusum (IZC); High school diploma. Male students and their parents receive the information about 28–34 year old men, while female students and their parents receive the information about women. The control students will receive the job prospect information that is not disaggregated. After the online survey, both treatment and control students will also receive the disaggregated and aggregated information, respectively, through emails.

For students, we will conduct an online survey that (1) asks about demographics and other baseline information including baseline beliefs and preferences about tertiary education and future employment. (2) We then make interventions for treatment students right after the survey by providing the information about future job prospects (a. employment rates, b. employer types, c. Earnings) disaggregated at the major level). For control students, we provide the aggregated information, instead of the disaggregated information. (3) Right after the intervention, we will ask again about beliefs, which may be updated because of the information provision for both the treatment and control group.

In late March 2021 after the online survey, we will provide the information (a. employment rates, b. employer types, c. Earnings) via emails. If a student clicks a link in the email, the student can see the information. The link is unique to a student and valid only once. The type of information to be provided will accord with treatment status of each student.

Treatment parents receive (1) a mailed letter and leaflet that explain the future job prospects disaggregated by the types of degrees and (2) a phone call in which an enumerator verbally explains the information. Control parents do not receive any information by either mail or call.

2021-02-05

2021-03-05

[Students] Actual educational choice after high school graduation; Preferences on educational choices, beliefs about future employment outcomes (employment rate and wage) for each educational choice

[Parents] Preferences on child’s educational choices; Beliefs about child’s future employment outcomes (employment rate and wage) for each educational choices

[Students] Beliefs about their parents’ preferences about their educational choices

Our study subjects are 9565 grade 12 students from 57 high schools and their parents in Bhutan.

We cross-randomize the information interventions to students and parents. There are four types of groups: (1) treatment student + treatment parents, (2) treatment student + control parents, (3) control student + treatment parents, and (4) control student + control parents.

We conduct a census survey of students, while we survey the parents of approximately 50% of students at the baseline and endline.

The selection of our study subjects, randomization, and data collection are conducted as follows:

[Study Subjects]
Our study subjects are all the grade 12 students (equivalent to high school seniors) who satisfy the following criteria:
(1) A student goes to one of the 57 high schools under this study. Of all 75 high schools in the country, these 57 high schools were selected based on whether the ministry of education had nearly complete contact information of the students and their parents as of January 1, 2021. We received the contact information from the ministry of education.
(2) A student’s email address and parent contact information (that is, name, phone, and address) are available in the contact information from the ministry of education as of January 1, 2021.
(3) A student takes an online survey and completes the last question before the session of the information provision starts.

There are 9565 students who satisfy the first and second criteria above. Once the online survey is launched, the number of our study subjects will be finalized as per the third criteria.

[Randomization]
1. Initial randomization: We cross-randomize the student treatment and the parent treatment across the 9565 students at the individual level. The assignment of the student and the parent treatment is independent of each other and stratified by schools, genders, and high school academic streams.
2. The randomized status of the student treatment will be kept if a student participates in the online survey through a unique link in an email sent by us. However, it is expected that many students cannot participate in the survey through a unique link (mostly because their email addresses available to us are invalid, and students forget passwords to access their school-domain email addresses). In this case, students will participate in the online survey via a public link, and their status of student treatment will be randomly reassigned in the beginning of the survey. This randomization is not stratified.
3. The parent treatment status will be kept the same as determined in process 1 above.

[Data collection]
1. Students
1-1. The online survey: We will collect the information about students (e.g., preferences and beliefs about tertiary education before and after the information provision, demographics, etc.) in the online survey. It is a census survey, although it is expected that some students will not take the survey.
1-2. We will conduct a follow-up online survey in April 2021 to collect updated preference and beliefs about education and future employment outcomes. The online survey link will be emailed to all students, although a response rate is expected to be not high.
1-3. We will collect the data about their actual educational choices from the ministry of education in summer to fall 2021.

2. Parents
Of the 9565 students, we randomly select 4760 students for the parent survey at the baseline and endline. This random sampling is stratified by high school, gender, and academic stream. The surveys at the baseline and endline collect the information about parents’ beliefs and preferences about their children’s tertiary education and future careers. The surveys will be conducted over the phone.

[Overall timeline]
January 2021: Initial randomization of the treatment status. Random sampling for the parent surveys. Baseline parent survey
February 2021: Online student survey, which includes the information intervention to students. Information intervention to parents. Email campaigns to students that provides career-related information.
March 2021: Endline parent survey.
Summer to Fall 2021: Data collection of students’ actual choices on tertiary education

Randomization done in Stata

Individual

No

Neither our intervention nor survey sampling is clustered.

[Student observations] Our study subjects are the students who take the online survey (more specifically who answer the last question before the information provision session starts in the online survey) among the 9565 students. All of these students are surveyed in the online survey. [Parent observations] From the 9565 students, we randomly sample 4760 students. We collect baseline and endline data of the parents of these 4760 students.

[Student sample] Of the students who take the online survey among the 9565 students, 25% each are in treatment student + treatment parents arm; treatment student + control parents arm; control student + treatment parents arm; and control student + control parents arm, respectively.

[Parent sample] Similarly, 25% of the 4760 students whose parents are surveyed are in each of the four treatment arms.