Post-secondary education
Labor Market Effects of Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs: Lessons from Colombia
This paper estimates the heterogeneous labor market effects of enrolling in higher education short-cycle (SC) programs. Expanding access to these programs might affect the behavior of some students (compliers) in two margins: the expansion margin (students who would not have enrolled in higher… more →
Cows Don't Give Milk: An Effort Model of College Graduation
This paper estimates a dynamic model of college enrollment, progression, and graduation. A central feature of the model is student effort, which has a direct effect on class completion and an indirect effect mitigating risks on class completion and college persistence. The estimated model… more →
The Dynamic Market for Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs
Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) form skilled human capital in two or three years and could be key to upskilling and reskilling the workforce, provided their supply responds fast and nimbly to local labor market needs. We study determinants of SCP entry and exit in Colombia for… more →
The Limited Impact of Free College Policies
Despite the growing popularity of free college proposals, countries with higher college subsidies tend to have higher enrollment rates but not higher graduation rates. To capture this evidence and evaluate potential free college policies, we rely on a dynamic model of college enrollment,… more →
What makes a program good? Evidence from short-cycle higher education programs in five developing countries
Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) can play a central role in skill development and higher education expansion, yet their quality varies greatly within and among countries. In this paper we explore the relationship between programs’ practices and inputs (quality determinants) and… more →
The contribution of short-cycle programs to student outcomes: Evidence from Colombia
Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs), lasting two or three years, capture about a quarter of higher education enrollment in the world and can play a key role enhancing workforce skills. In this paper, we estimate the program-level contribution of SCPs to student academic and labor market… more →
“All Students Matter:” The Place of Race in Discourse on Student Debt in a Federal Higher Education Policymaking Process
We used Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the racial discourse within recent attempts to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Specifically, we interrogated congressional markup hearings to understand how members frame student debt and the racialized dynamics embedded within. Our findings… more →
Human versus Machine: Do college advisors outperform a machine-learning algorithm in predicting student enrollment?
Prediction algorithms are used across public policy domains to aid in the identification of at-risk individuals and guide service provision or resource allocation. While growing research has investigated concerns of algorithmic bias, much less research has compared algorithmically-driven… more →
Advancing a Framework of Racialized Administrative Burdens in Higher Education Policy
Many policies in higher education are intended to improve college access and degree completion, yet often those policies fall short of their aims by making it difficult for prospective or current college students to access benefits for which they are eligible. Barriers that inhibit access to… more →
The Impacts and Experiences of Corequisite Remediation for Latinx Students
Colleges across the United States are now placing most or all students directly into college-level courses and providing supplementary, aligned academic support alongside the courses, also known as “corequisite remediation.” Developmental education reforms like corequisite remediation could… more →
College-Major Choice to College-then-Major Choice: The Heterogeneous Impacts of Late Specification Reforms on College Student Composition
This paper provides one of the first natural experimental evidence on the consequences of a transition from college-major (early specialization) to college-then-major (late specialization) choice mechanism. Specifically, we study a recent reform in China that allows college applicants to apply… more →
College-Major Choice to College-then-Major Choice: Experimental Evidence from Chinese College Admissions Reforms
One of the most important mechanism design policies in college admissions is to let students choose a college major sequentially (college-then-major choice) or jointly (college-major choice). In the context of the Chinese meta-major reforms that transition from college-major choice to college-… more →
“I Don’t Think the System Will Ever Be the Same”: Distance Education Leaders’ Predictions and Recommendations for the Use of Online Learning in Community Colleges Post-COVID
While the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the short-term use of online courses, colleges’ experiences with COVID-era online course delivery may also affect the way that they offer and approach online courses going forward. We draw on interviews with 35 distance education leaders from the… more →
Who’s Matched Up? Access to Same-Race Instructors in Higher Education
Despite consistent evidence on the benefits of same-race instructor matching in K-12 settings and developing work in higher education, research has yet to conceptualize and document the incidence of same-race matching. That is, even if same-race matching produces positive effects, how likely are… more →
Underrepresented Minority Students in College: The Role of Classmates
The role of racial diversity at college campuses has been debated for over a half a century with limited quasi-experimental evidence from classrooms. To fill this void, I estimate the extent that classmate racial compositions affect Hispanic and African-American students at a large and over-… more →
Assessing Atlanta’s Placed-Based College Scholarship
We investigate whether and how Achieve Atlanta’s college scholarship and associated services impact college enrollment, persistence, and graduation among Atlanta Public School graduates experiencing low household income. Qualifying for the scholarship of up to $5,000/year does not… more →
Variation in broadband access among undergraduate populations across the United States
Increasing numbers of students require internet access to pursue their undergraduate degrees, yet broadband access remains inequitable across student populations. Furthermore, surveys that currently show differences in access by student demographics or location typically do so at high levels of… more →
Opening the Black Box of College Major Choice: Evidence from an Information Intervention
We study the importance of job-related and non-job-related factors in students’ college major choices. Using a staggered intervention that allows us to provide students information about many different aspects of majors and to compare the magnitudes of the effects of each piece of information,… more →
Mandating Multiple Measures and Encouraging Student Supports: Evaluating a New Approach to Developmental Education in California’s Community Colleges
AB705 is a landmark higher education policy that has changed approaches to developmental/remedial education in the California Community College system. We study one district that implemented reforms by placing most students in transfer-level math/English courses and encouraging enrollment in… more →
Are Students Time Constrained? Course Load, GPA, and Failing
Given the simultaneous rise in time-to-graduation and college GPA, it may be that students reduce their course load to improve their performance. Yet, evidence to date only shows increased course loads increase GPA. We provide a mathematical model showing many unobservable factors -- beyond… more →