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Gillian Wyness

University College London,UK; London School of Economics, UK, and IZA, Germany

I’m very happy to contribute to the IZA World of Labor series on a subject I think is fascinating and important. I hope it will be useful to other academics interested in evidence about the nature and extent of university mismatch.

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Professor of Economics, IOE, University College London (UCL's) Faculty of Education and Society, Centre for Education Policy and Equalizing Opportunities (UCL CEPEO); London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance (CEP, LSE), UK

Research interest

Labor economics, economics of education

Website

https://www.iza.org/people/staff/6353/gill-wyness

Past positions

Research Economist, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, UK

Qualifications

PhD Economics, UCL Institute of Education, 2009

Selected publications

  • "Testing means-tested aid." Journal of Labor Economics, 41(3), 687-727 (2023) (with R. Murphy).

  • "Matching in the dark? Inequalities in student to degree match." Journal of Labor Economics, 40(4), 807-850 (2022) (with S. Campbell, L. Macmillan, and R. Murphy).

  • "The end of free college in England: Implications for enrolments, equity, and quality." Economics of Education Review (2019) (with R. Murphy and J. Scott Clayton).

  • "Student awareness of costs and benefits of educational decisions: Effects of an information campaign." Journal of Human Capital 10 :4 (2016) ( with M. McGuigan and S. McNally).

  • "Higher education, career opportunities and intergenerational inequality." Oxford Review of Economic Policy 32:4 (2016): 553–575 (with C. Crawford, P. Gregg, L. Macmillan, and A. Vignoles).

article(s)

  • The merits of teacher assessment versus external exams to measure student achievement

    Are teachers best placed to assess their students or are external exams more effective?

    Oliver Cassagneau-FrancisGillian Wyness, June 2025
    There is little to no consensus in the academic literature over whether centralised, standardised exams are better for students than teacher assessments. While a growing body of evidence from economics highlights bias in teacher assessments, educationalists and psychologists point to the harm caused by high-stakes exam-related stress and argue that exams and teacher assessments generally agree very closely. This lack of academic consensus is reflected in policy: a wide variety of assessment methods are used across (and even within) countries. Policymakers should be aware of the potential for inequalities in non-blind assessments and consider carefully the consequences of relying on a single method of assessment.
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  • What is the nature and extent of student–university mismatch?

    Students do worse if their abilities fail to match the requirements of the institutions where they matriculate

    Gillian WynessRichard Murphy, June 2020
    A growing body of research has begun to examine the match between student ability and university quality. Initial research focused on overmatch—where students are lower attaining than their college peers. However, more recently, attention has turned to undermatch, where students attend institutions with lower attaining peers. Both have been shown to matter for student outcomes; while in theory overmatch could be desirable, there is evidence that overmatched students are less likely to graduate college. Undermatched students, meanwhile, have been shown to experience lower graduate earnings.
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