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Bassi, Marina

Education Global Practice for Eastern and Southern Africa, World Bank
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Economics of Education, Impact Evaluation, Skills Development
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Education Global Practice for Eastern and Southern Africa, World Bank
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Last updated: June 24, 2024
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Marina Bassi is a Senior Economist in the Education Global Practice of the World Bank for East and Southern Africa at the World, where her work focuses in the Eastern and Southern countries of the Africa region. Before joining the World Bank in 2017, she worked at the Inter-American Development Bank in operational and analytical work on education for Latin American and the Caribbean. She has published in journals and books on areas including teaching practices, gender gaps in education, skills and impact evaluation of education programs. She co-authored the book “Disconnected: Education, Skills and Employment in Latin America”. She holds a PhD. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.

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    From Access to Achievement: The Primary School-Age Impacts of an At-Scale Preschool Construction Program in Highly Deprived Communities
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-24) Bassi, Marina; Besbas, Bruno; Dinarte-Diaz, Lelys; Ravindran, Saravana; Reynoso, Ana
    Using a randomized control trial, this paper studies an at-scale preschool construction program that serves poor communities in rural Mozambique. In addition to the construction of preschools, the program hired local instructors and provided parenting education sessions. The findings show that the program had high take-up rates, significantly increasing access to preschool education. Compared to a small base of 2 percent of children in control communities enrolled in preschool, the intervention increased preschool enrollment rates in treated communities by 73 percentage points. The program also had significant positive effects on enrollment in and progression through primary school, with an increase of 6 percentage points in enrollment in first grade at age 6, and a 0.16 standard deviation impact on an index of cognitive and social-emotional skills. Using machine learning tools, the paper estimates substantial heterogeneity by child development skills at baseline. Moreover, the program caused parents in treated communities to invest more time in supporting their primary school-aged children.
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    The Fast Track to New Skills: Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-09-29) Ferreyra, María Marta; Dinarte, Lelys; Urzúa, Sergio; Bassi, Marina
    Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has expanded dramatically in the new millennium, yet enrollment in short-cycle programs (SCPs) is still relatively low. Shorter and more practical than bachelor’s programs, SCPs can form skilled human capital fast. The economic crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic has accentuated underlying trends, such as automation, the use of electronic platforms, and the need for lifelong learning. Addressing these demands requires the urgent upskilling and reskilling of the population—a task for which SCPs are uniquely suited. The Fast Track to New Skills: Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean explores the labor market outcomes and returns of SCPs, examines their providers, and identifies the practices adopted by the best programs. Relying on unique data that includes a novel survey of SCP directors in five LAC countries, it finds that while SCPs generate, on average, good labor market outcomes, they vary greatly in quality. SCP providers respond quickly and flexibly to local economy needs; and specific practices related to faculty, job search assistance, and interaction with prospective employers are distinctive of the best programs. Drawing on these findings, The Fast Track to New Skills discusses how to create an environment where good programs are offered and students have the interest and means to attend them. It draws attention to a higher education sector that has been typically overlooked, both in research and policy. The Fast Track to New Skills will be of interest to policy makers, researchers, and the public at large.
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    What Makes a Program Good?: Evidence from Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs in Five Developing Countries
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Dinarte Diaz, Lelys; Ferreyra, Maria Marta; Urzua, Sergio; Bassi, Marina
    Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) can play a central role in skill development and higher education expansion, yet their quality varies greatly within and among countries. This paper explores the relationship between programs’ practices and inputs (quality determinants) and student academic and labor market outcomes. It designs and conduct a novel survey to collect program-level information on quality determinants and average outcomes for Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Peru. Categories of quality determinants include training and curriculum, infrastructure, faculty, link with productive sector, costs and funding, and practices on student admission and institutional governance. The paper also collects administrative, student-level data on higher education and formal employment for SCP students in Brazil and Ecuador and match it to survey data. Machine learning methods are used to select the quality determinants that predict outcomes at the program and student levels. Estimates indicate that some quality determinants may favor academic and labor market outcomes while others may hinder them. Two practices predict improvements in all labor market outcomes in Brazil and Ecuador—teaching numerical competencies and providing job market information—and one practice— teaching numerical competencies—additionally predicts improvements in labor market outcomes for all survey countries. Since quality determinants account for 20-40 percent of the explained variation in student-level outcomes, quality determinants might have a role shrinking program quality gaps. Findings have implications for the design and replication of high-quality SCPs, their regulation, and the development of information systems.