Influences on master’s degree students’ economic knowledge

Abstract

Despite the growing body of research, little is known about students’ economic knowledge at the beginning of, orat various points throughout, their master’s degree programs. In this study different impact factors on students’ microeconomic knowledge are tested. Based on the “utilization of learning opportunities model” by Helmke we focus on 1)individual and sociodemographic characteristics of the students, 2) their learning potential and study-related characteristics and 3) the characteristics and structure of their learning environment. For each of the three influencing factors we used different indicators that were expected to correlate with students’ knowledge. We tested the assumptions with hierarchical linear modeling with a sample of 1,281 students from 40 universities responding to microeconomics items. In the final model gender was the only significant variable among sociodemographic characteristics while study-related grades and attended courses were better predictors than the grade of the university entrance qualification.