Nepotism, incentives and the academic success of college students

This study investigates the role of patient-owned businesses on children's college success and post-college aspirations by using a unique data set from a private university in Turkey The data set matches college students administrative records with survey responses The presence of self-employed parents and family businesses has a strong negative association with college success even after accounting for observed ability. parental background, and various individual characteristics An explanation for the lower GPAs of the children of self-employed parents is that in the presence of parent-owned businesses students have a larger set of post-graduation options and are more likely to plan on becoming self-employed due to intergenerational transfer of self-employment Hence. these students may not exert as much effort in acquiring the task-specific career-oriented human capital taught in college. In line with expectations, we find that the children of self-employed parents are mole likely to have entrepreneural intent and are less likely to plan to attend graduate school (C) 2009 Elsevier B V All rights reserved