Implementing quotas in university admissions: An experimental investigation

Arbeitspapier

Quotas for special groups of students often apply in school or university admission procedures. This paper studies the performance of two mechanisms to implement such quotas in a lab experiment. The first mechanism is a simplified version of the mechanism currently employed by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions, which first allocates seats in the quota for top-grade students before allocating all other seats among remaining applicants. The second is a modified version of the student-proposing deferred acceptance (SDA) algorithm, which simultaneously allocates seats in all quotas. Our main result is that the current procedure, designed to give top-grade students an advantage, actually harms them, as students often fail to grasp the strategic issues involved. The modified SDA algorithm significantly improves the matching for top-grade students and could thus be a valuable tool for redesigning university admissions in Germany.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: Kiel Working Paper ; No. 1761

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior ; Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation ; Education and Research Institutions: General
• Subject: college admissions ; experiment ; quotas ; matching ; Gale-Shapley mechanism ; Boston mechanism ; Hochschule ; Studienfach ; Angebot ; Quotenregulierung ; Studierende ; Nachfrage ; Matching ; Shapley-Wert ; Deutschland

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Braun, Sebastian ; Dwenger, Nadja ; Kübler, Dorothea ; Westkamp, Alexander
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
• (where): Kiel
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/56383
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET