Educational Aspirations
The gap in educational aspirations by educational background is very large in Germany: 74 percent of German university graduates, but only 36 percent of those without a university degree favor a university degree for their children. Randomized provision of information about the benefits and costs of higher education increases the educational aspirations in survey experiments. But these effects tend to be even larger for individuals with university education than individuals without. The results thus suggest that ignorance of economic returns and costs of studying does not seem to contribute to an explanation of educational inequality in Germany.
Here you can find a short non-technical overview on this topic.
Research paper:
Does Ignorance of Economic Returns and Costs Explain the Educational Aspiration Gap? Representative Evidence from Adults and Adolescents (with P. Lergetporer and K. Werner). Economica 88 (351): 624-670, 2021 [tweet] [video]