In the Face of Rejection: Student Motivation and Career Dynamics in Health Care Markets

This paper investigates the effects of student motivation on degree completion in medical and nursing school programs and subsequent health care career dynamics. Our research design combines administrative college application, enrollment, and labor market data from Denmark with a source of plausibly exogenous variation in health degree motivation from program admission requirements. This allows us to shed new light on the significance of intrinsic motivation on degree and geographic specialization, practicing quality, and career attachment among health care professionals. We believe that these contributions are very policy relevant in light of concerns over physician and nurse shortages, particularly so in rural areas, and limited enrollment capacity in medical and nursing school programs.