College Readiness Assessment
Category: Pathways to and Through Postsecondary
We leverage employment and earnings data from a large credit bureau, program data from LaunchCode—a free technology education, and in-depth interviews with applicants and instructors to examine if the LaunchCode program leads to economic benefits, who is most likely to experience these benefits, and how this program produces these benefits. We first conduct an intent-to-treat analysis by leveraging entrance exam scores as an instrumental variable. While we don’t find a positive effect on STEM employment, we find large, significant effects on income after 48 months. We then conduct a treatment-on-treated analysis by leveraging multinomial propensity score weights to balance applicants across a range of program participation levels. We find that both course and apprenticeship completers experience a similar, modest, increase in STEM employment at 48 months; however, apprenticeship completers experienced an income increase that was nearly double that of those that only completed the course. Additionally, while LaunchCode appears to be a tool for advancing gender and racial equity in STEM, more complex findings were observed regarding social class. Finally, our qualitative findings highlight the potential for apprenticeships to allow for smooth transitions to permanent, full-time employment at the same employer, while also facilitating new social networks.
Keywords
Coding Bootcamps; Apprenticeships; STEM; Labor Market Returns
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/x36m-gc95
