Opportunity-focused, high-growth entrepreneurship and science-led innovation are crucial for continued economic growth and productivity. Working in these fields offers the opportunity for rewarding and high-paying careers. However, the majority of youth in developing countries do not consider either as job options, affecting their choices of what to study. Youth may not select these educational and career paths due to lack of knowledge, lack of appropriate skills, and lack of role models. We provide a scalable approach to overcoming these constraints through an online education course for secondary school students that covers entrepreneurial soft skills, scientific methods, and interviews with role models.
The study comprises three experimental trials provided Before and during COVID-19 pandemic in different regions of Ecuador. This catalog entry includes data from Experiment 2: Highlands Educational Regime (Régimen Sierra-Amazonía) 2020. The data from the other two experiments are also available in the catalog.
Experiment 2: Highlands Educational Regime (Régimen Sierra-Amazonía) 2020
In course of Showing Life Opportunities project we provided a randomized experiment in Ecuador as rapid fire response to the hurdles of COVID-19 for the Highlands Educational regimes schools (Régimen Sierra 2020); Students finish the program in July 2020. The intervention is an online education course that covers entrepreneurial soft skills, scientific methods, and interviews with role models. This course is taken by students at home during the COVID-19 pandemic under teachers’ supervision. We work mostly with 14-22-year-old students (14,451 students) in 416 schools assigned to the program. We randomly assign schools either to treatment (and receiving the entrepreneurship courses online), or placebo-control (receiving a placebo treatment of online courses from standard curricula) groups. We also cross-randomize the role models and evaluate set of nimble interventions to increase take-up.
The details of intervention can be found in AEA registry:
Asanov, Igor and David McKenzie. 2021. Scaling up virtual learning of online learning in high schools. AEA RCT Registry. March 23. cross-randomize schools to a role model treatment of interviews with successful scientists and entrepreneurs. In addition, we provide information about career options.