College Readiness Assessment
Category: Pathways to and Through Postsecondary
Using Texas administrative data and a regression discontinuity design, I study how transferring between colleges affects students’ earnings. I leverage applications and admissions data to uncover unpublished GPA cutoffs used for transfer student admissions at each fouryear institution, then use these cutoffs as an instrument for transfer. I do not find positive earnings returns for academically marginal students who transfer from two-year to four-year colleges or from less-resourced four-year colleges to flagship colleges and show suggestive evidence of negative returns. Mechanisms include academic “mismatch” among two-year to four-year transfers, and substitution out of high-paying majors for four-year to flagship transfers.
Keywords
college transfer, returns to college, college resources, community college
Education level
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/4khw-c054
