What drives the wage expectations of Macedonian students?

Given that the main pathway to developing human capital of an individual is schooling, learning about the factors that affect individual's decision whether to acquire more education can contribute towards better educational policy in the country. We use available information to regress: i) expected monthly net earnings after university graduation, ii) expected monthly net earnings with only high school diploma, iii) expected monthly net university earnings 10 years after graduation and iv) expected monthly net high school earnings 10 years after obtaining a high school degree, on a set of variables which includes: characteristics of the individual, socio-economic background, field of study, year of enrolment (junior or senior students), academic performance, sources of information for future earnings and country of future employment, perceived employability and costs of studies. Our findings show that expected university earnings are significantly correlated with father's education, year of study, sources of information on wages in the labour market, gender, ethnicity, regular job during studies,perceived employability, field of study and country of future employment.