The University Gender Gap: The Role of High School Grades by Dr. Torben Drewes of Trent University investigates possible factors leading to the male-female gap in high school marks as a means of exploring reasons behind the growing gender gap in university attendance. Unlike many previous studies that dealt with why males seem to have a lower desire to be in university, Drewes focuses on student ability to attend PSE, which depends on secondary school grades that serve as a primary filter for university admission. Since grades are in part determined by individual effort as measured in hours spent studying, the paper looked at the question of whether or not the academic gender gap is simply a product of a gap in work effort. The study found a strong correlation between effort and grades, and that this correlation was equally strong for both males and females; however this correlation was complicated when a separate measure of academic ability is put into play. The study concluded that just under half of the difference between male-female grades can be explained by girls studying more than boys. The paper argues that the other half of difference is the result of females' greater efficiency in converting a given amount of study time into a grade.

The Effect of High School Resources on Investment in Post-Secondary Education by Dr. Kathleen Day of the University of Ottawa examines the effects of a number of secondary school characteristics (including teacher-pupil ratio and expenditures per student) on a variety of educational outcomes such as secondary school grades, standardized test scores and attendance of post-secondary education. When it comes to looking at educational attainment (i.e. probability of attending post-secondary education by age 19 or 21) almost no measure of school resources could be shown to have a major effect on outcomes. While concluding that the impact of school resources on educational outcomes (including post-secondary education attendance) were hard to detect, Dr. Day cautions against jumping to the conclusion that "resources don't matter," and emphasizes that there may be insufficient differences in resources between schools in Canada for any effects to be detected using the investigative techniques employed.

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