Titelaufnahme

Without a school degree, students can have difficulty in the labor market. To improve the lives of upper-secondary school dropouts, German states instituted a school reform that awarded an interim degree to high-track students upon completion of Grade 9. Using retrospective spell data on school and labor market careers from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), our difference-in-differences approach exploits the staggered implementation of this reform between 1965 and 1982. As intended, the reform reduced switching between school tracks. Surprisingly, it also increased successful hightrack completion, university entrance rates, and later income, arguably by reducing the perceived risk of trying longer in the high-track school.