Beyond years of schooling: Genetic associations across educational milestones in two Norwegian cohorts.

Genetic associations with educational milestones peak at high-school to bachelor's transition, then decline at postgraduate levels, revealing distinct genetic influences across educational stages.

• Why it matters: Understanding how genetic factors influence specific educational achievements can improve insights into educational progression and its biological underpinnings, addressing limitations of traditional years-of-education measures.
• What they did: The study combined GWAS, polygenic indices, and twin models across two Norwegian cohorts (N=129,437) to analyze genetic contributions to high-school, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral attainment, focusing on transition-specific heritability and genetic correlations.
• The result: Genetic heritability and PGI discrimination peaked at the high-school to bachelor’s transition and decreased afterward, with lower genetic overlap between distant milestones, enabling more precise interpretation of genetic influences on educational progression.