The social, economic and cultural characteristics of family, that is transmitted to children biologically and culturally, has an impact on socioeconomic achievements of individuals in question throughout their life. In that respect, we analyzed the impact of socioeconomic characteristics of families on numerical and equal-weighted "The Transition to Higher Education Examination" (YGS) scores of highschool graduate students in Denizli in 2012. The findings of the study show that private teaching institution, education level of father and elementary family variables have a positive impact, while being transferred from another school has a negative impact on these scores. On the other hand the result of numerical scores are effected by much more socioeconomic variables than equal-weighted scores have important clues for the politics devoted to increasing academic achievements and decreasing income-inequalities.

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Education, which enhances human capital's qualification and productivity and increases individual's future earnings, is also one of the most effective political instruments that permanently solves income inequalities problem. In this study, utilizing Quantile regression techniques in Denizli we analyzed the effect of education level of mother and father on household's income. Results indicated that while the impact of mother's educational level on income does not show a significant difference for different points of the distribution; the impact of father's education level on income reaches the highest level in the mid-point (q50) of the distribution, after that point as the father's education level increases, household's income less increases.

regresyon yöntemleriyle analiz yapılmıştır. Çalışmanın temel bulguları: (i) en yüksek ücrete sahip %10'luk dilim ile en düşük ücretli %10'luk dilim arasındaki ücret farkı (90-10 oranı) azalmıştır, (ii) asgari ücrette yaşanan artışlar alt gelir gruplarının gelirlerini üst gelir gruplarına yaklaştırmıştır, (iii) üniversite eğitimindeki niceliksel artışlar üniversite eğitiminin ücretler üzerindeki etkisini azaltmaya başlamıştır. Son bulgu, Türkiye'de üniversite mezunları açısından son yıllarda nicelik konusunda çok önemli artışlar olmasına karşın, nitelik konusunda önemli sorunların varlığına işaret etmektedir. Ayrıca eğitimli işgücü talebindeki artış, işgücü arzının gerisinde kalmış ve bu durum üniversite mezunlarının ücretleri üzerinde negatif bir baskıyı beraberinde getirmiştir. Çalışmanın bulguları Türkiye ekonomisinde yapısal dönüşüme yönelik geliştirilecek politikalar açısından oldukça önemlidir.

Purpose This study aims to analyze the wage differentials of the majors in college education in Turkey, which is a country implementing an ongoing expansion in college education in recent years. Design/methodology/approach The study implements Mincreian wage regression using ordinary least squares, Heckman two-step estimation and quantile regression with sample selection correction by using household labor force surveys of TurkStat from the years 2014–2017. Findings The findings indicate one of the highest heterogeneity, close to 0.50 log points, between majors in the literature. The within-heterogeneity created by majors is highest among the graduates of social-behavioral sciences, law, biology, physics, mathematics, statistics, computer, engineering and manufacturing, as shown by a 90–10 difference, which is almost 700% for some of these majors. This study shows that the natural science and technical majors that are expected to be more productive and to be paid more fall behind in the wage distribution. Research limitations/implications Estimation results show that natural science majors, except for subjects allied to medicine and engineering, are paid lower than law and service-sector-related majors. This indicates that the predictions of the skill-biased technical change hypothesis are not valid in the wage profiles in Turkey and that some majors supply more than the sectoral needs. This casts doubts on the effectiveness of the ongoing higher education expansion process of the country. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature on wage differentials of college majors, an area with limited studies. This is the first study analyzing wage differentials of the field of studies by correcting sample selection bias for the Turkish case.