The limits of monetised utility: evidence from Indigenous students’ postsecondary education decisions in Canada

This research combines principles from Psychology and Economics to gain insight into the present state of Indigenous engagement in postsecondary education in Canada and deepen our understanding of factors that may be contributing to educational disparities. In a series of papers, I explore the factors influencing the decisions of Inuit, Métis, and First Nations students to attend university, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the motivations behind their choices. In doing so, I identify systemic empirical inconsistencies in leading economic theories and present evidence challenging the foundational assumptions upon which these theories are anchored and which have become the cornerstone of economic thought—that estimates of the monetary equivalent of the value of outcomes are reliable proxies for the utility those outcomes provide in non-money-maximizing entities. These findings suggest caution when treating monetised utility values as universal bases for comparison amongst individuals or subpopulations with varied backgrounds, histories, and cultures or when considering the adoption of theories which depend on financial incentives as the primary motivator driving student decisions to pursue postsecondary programs.