Higher education enrolment in Bangladesh: does the wage premium matter?

This paper empirically examines the decisions of individuals to enrol in a course of tertiary education in Bangladesh, focussing on the period 1999 to 2009. Of particular interest is whether the wage premium―the gap in wage earnings between tertiary and secondary school graduates―is associated with decisions to enrol in tertiary education. The analytical framework used here is the human capital theory, which is tested through a discrete choice model. Using data from Bangladesh Labour Force Surveys, empirical results suggest that the wage premium is positively associated with decisions of males to enrol in tertiary education, while for females there appears to be no such association. A battery of robustness tests supports our results.