Lessons from Oslo

Nick Ford
Lund University

Trygve Andersen
University of Tromsø

Kristin Ranestad
University of Oslo

Paul Sharp
University of Southern Denmark, CAGE, CEPR

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The first Scandinavian universities were established in the fifteenth century. But it was not until 1811 that plans were announced for the first university in Norway: what is today the University of Oslo. Prior to this, aspiring Norwegian academics would travel to Copenhagen to study. Many high-status professions in Norwegian society — including in state administration and the church — required university-level qualifications.

We exploit the opening of the University of Oslo in 1813 to investigate the impact of national and local access to higher education. To what extent did the opening of the University of Oslo influence higher educational attainment beyond what might be expected due to the reduction in access costs brought about by having a university close by?

We link the individual-level censuses for Denmark and Norway in 1801 to complete lists of high school graduates. Our empirical approach is a difference-in-difference analysis, where we compare Danish and Norwegian cohorts in the years immediately before and after the new Norwegian university opened. We assess whether the new university affected educational attainment across Norway, or only in areas closest to Oslo.

Graduate numbers increased following the opening of the university. We find that the probability of enrolling increased after 1813 in Norway relative to Denmark, and that this effect was not concentrated on Oslo and surrounds. That is, the change in distance to a university mattered less than having a university in the country. This remains when controlling for cohort, and household-background fixed effects.

Our empirical approach is underpinned by three key factors. First, the timing of the establishment of the University of Oslo was not determined by Norway itself — and thus can be considered exogenous. Second, the University of Oslo was modelled closely on the University of Copenhagen and offered substantially the same courses — the new university did not offer instruction in new skills. Third, political circumstances acted to cleanly separate the Danish and Norwegian cohorts after the University of Oslo opened: Norwegians no longer moved to Copenhagen to study, and Danes did not study in Oslo.