Over the period 2001/2005 Italy experienced an expansion of enrollment
in higher education benefiting from the Bologna Process. This paper evaluates the
effects of this policy on academic performance: we compare the performances of
students who switch from pre-reform university courses to post-reform ones with
that of students who stay in pre-reform university courses. The aim of the paper
is to estimate the difference in graduation probability, allowing for the changing
university regime (the treatment), job opportunities and other characteristics of the
students.We considered a sample of 25,866 undergraduate students enrolled at University
of Trieste, which is reduced to a balanced sample of 1,020 units by matching
techniques. Estimates of a logistic models on the balanced sample suggest that the
treatment effect differs between the “old” and the young students: the treatment
appearing beneficial for the younger ones only.
