Determinants of the decision to go to college in Argentina

Increasing attention to higher education policies in the knowledge-based society makes important to understand the relationship between socio-economic family characteristics and educational choices. This paper considers the decision to go to college in Argentina as a family's economic decision. The goal is to investigate the impact of family income on the decision to go to a university versus the decision to go to a community college in Argentina. Using a probit model of the decision to go to college, the results of this paper show that the income of the rest of the family has a positive and statistically significant impact on the decision to go to college. A multinomial logit model (where the choices are no college, community college or university) shows that the income of the rest of the family is important in order to determine the probability to go to a community college versus the other two possibilities. Family income also has a positive impact in the decision to go to a university versus the other two choices. This model also shows that parents education is an important factor in explaining the decision to go to a university as well as to go to a community college.