Higher education
Do Dual Enrollment Students Realize Better Long-Run Earnings? Variations in Financial Outcomes Among Key Student Groups
Navi Dhaliwal, Sayeeda Jamilah, McKenna Griffin, Dillon Lu, David Mahan, Trey Miller, Holly Kosiewicz.This study considers whether dual enrollment is associated with students’ financial outcomes over a longer, twelve-year time horizon after high school graduation than previously analyzed in the existing literature. Using longitudinal administrative data that span K-12, higher education, and the… more →
The Costs and Benefits of North Carolina’s Early College High School Model
Early colleges are high schools that blend the high school and college experiences. They have been shown to increase college enrollment and completion; however less is known about the costs of the early college model relative to traditional high schools. We leverage randomized assignment of… more →
Corequisite Course Models in California Community Colleges: Implementation Variation and Challenges
Tags: Higher educationAs community colleges and systems move away from developmental education and encourage students to enroll in introductory, college-level coursework to complete their math and English requirements, it is critical to provide students with additional academic supports to help them succeed. One such… more →
Return on Investment or Ripoff? Examining the Returns to New Master’s Degree Programs
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceUniversities have created more than 14,000 new master’s degree programs in the last two decades, and much of this is likely driven by an effort to increase institutional revenues during challenging financial times. But this expansion in graduate education creates a risk that these new programs… more →
Early Impacts of the FAFSA Requirement in Texas
In 2021−22, Texas implemented a policy requiring all public high school seniors to complete a financial aid application. This paper examines the early impacts of this requirement on Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion rates and college enrollment using a difference-in-… more →
In the Wake of Dobbs: The Effect of State Abortion Bans on Women's College Choices
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Higher education, Human capitalThis paper studies the impact of state reproductive rights laws on women’s human capital decisions after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022). Using data from the Common App, the undergraduate college… more →
GenAI-101: What Undergraduate Students Need to Know and Actually Know About Generative AI
In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a groundbreaking generative AI chatbot backed by large language models (LLMs). Since then, these models have seen various applications in education, from Socratic tutoring and writing assistance to teacher training and essay scoring. Despite their… more →
How are Institutions Positioned on the Brink of the Enrollment Cliff?: Evidence from Ohio
Tags: Higher education, LeadershipSince 2018, institutions of higher education have been aware of the "enrollment cliff" which refers to expected declines in future enrollment. This paper attempts to describe how prepared institutions in Ohio are for this future by looking at trends leading up to the anticipated decline. Using… more →
Understanding Variation in Post-College Earnings: Evidence from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard
Tags: Higher educationUsing the detailed college level data from the College Scorecard on students’ post-college earnings from the near universe of four-year colleges, we assess the usefulness of going beyond comparing colleges based only on median earnings and analyze the descriptive relationship between college… more →
Buying time: Financial aid allows college students to work less while enrolled
Many empirical studies have established that financial aid improves college attainment. Few have been able to test why. This study used administrative records of employment and earnings to get a more complete picture of students’ finances during college and test one potential mechanism, that… more →
Reconstructing PhD Admissions Through Organizational Learning
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Equity, Higher educationThe goal of this study was to assess the outcomes of a grant-funded intervention designed to provide comprehensive training and support for holistic admissions in 26 STEM PhD programs at five California research universities. This pilot intervention combined a flexible, research-based model of… more →
Effects of Early College on Educational Attainment for All in Massachusetts
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceEvaluations of Early College, a type of intervention that enables simultaneous enrollment in secondary and post-secondary courses in the United States, consistently find positive effects on educational attainment across racial and socioeconomic groups.
Unlocking College Potential: The Role of Student Expectations and Non-Cognitive Skills in College Success
Tags: Higher education, MotivationAttending college is a significant human capital investment but only about 60% of those who start college will have a completed degree six years later. This makes identifying the skills associated with college success an important policy concern.
Examining the Relationship Between Randomization Strategies and Control Group Crossover in Higher Education Interventions
Topics: MethodsTags: Higher educationThis article examines the risk of crossover contamination in individual-level randomization, a common concern in experimental research, in the context of a large-enrollment college course. While individual-level randomization is more efficient for assessing program effectiveness, it also… more →
Technology Apprenticeships and Labor Market Outcomes: Mixed-Methods Evidence from the LaunchCode Program
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… more →
Do Innovative Career Pathways in Massachusetts High Schools Promote Equitable Access to Higher Education?
Two persistent shortcomings of the American labor market are the wage gaps and unequal unemployment rates that exist between racial groups. More specifically, Black and Latinx high school graduates earn less and are more likely to be unemployed than their White counterparts, on average. Likewise… more →
Credit Loss, Institutional Retention, and Postsecondary Persistence Among Vertical Transfer Students
Although community colleges have served as a gateway to universities for millions of students—disproportionately so for students from populations historically underrepresented in higher education—prior research has demonstrated that the majority of vertical transfer students lose at least some… more →
Classifying Courses at Scale: a Text as Data Approach to Characterizing Student Course-Taking Trends with Administrative Transcripts
Topics: MethodsTags: Curriculum, Higher educationStudents’ postsecondary course-taking is of interest to researchers, yet has been difficult to study at large scale because administrative transcript data are rarely standardized across institutions or state systems. This paper uses machine learning and natural language processing to standardize… more →
Foreign Student Share and Supply of STEM-Designated Economics Programs
Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of U.S. institutions offering STEM-eligible degree programs in economics. This paper documents the trends in STEM-degree offerings across degree levels and examines the share of foreign students and other characteristics… more →
The Graduation Part II: Graduate Program Graduation Rates
Tags: Higher educationThis paper documents several facts about graduate program graduation rates using administrative data covering public and nonprofit graduate students in Texas. Despite conventional wisdom that most graduate students complete their programs, only 58 percent of who started their program in 2004… more →