Figure 2 Total number of participants in upper secondary AE in 1988-2001 with
prior compulsory school or two- or three-year upper secondary school.
------Comp - - - .2 yr upp sec------3 yr upp sec------Total
In the data, each course is associated with a number of “course hours” that are
equal to its number of credits. In the following, an individual’s credits from a
course are equal to the course hours if the grade is at least three out of five or,
after 1993/94, at least a pass. If the grade is missing, if course interruption is
reported or if the grade is below three (or after 1993/94 ‘fail’) the credit is set
to zero.6 This is to make the number of credits a better measure of some true
human capital improvement. The credits at komvux are accumulated over the
semesters to give each individual his or her total number of credits. In the
regular upper secondary school, 700 credits correspond to a year of studies.
However, komvux does not include certain subjects such as sports and/or art
and Skolverket (2000, section 4.3) suggests that 500 credits at komvux corre-
spond to a schooling year.
With this short background, the analysis from here on is divided into two
separate samples depending on whether or not individuals were registered in
higher education.
6 Statistics Sweden has since 1993 followed up missing grades for Maths, Swedish and English.
Comparing the grades of these subjects with grades of other subjects, the fractions with at least
the grade ‘three’ appear similar both before and after 1993. This suggests that missing grades in
the majority of cases are interruptions or grades below three.
IFAU - Does adult education at upper secondary level influence annual wage earnings?
13