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Higher education
Talent at the Top: Effects of Taxation on University Presidents’ Compensation and Priorities
College presidents are among the highest-paid individuals in higher education, and in 2017 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act increased their cost to their institutions via a 21% excise tax on nonprofit executive compensation above $1 million. I examine how private colleges and universities and their… more →
Improvements in Using Distance to Predict College Enrollment
Tags: Higher educationGeographic proximity to college is a widely used instrument for estimating returns to postsecondary education. Most applications rely on geodesic ("crow-flies") distance, which is easy to calculate but a poor proxy for actual travel costs when terrain, water, or congestion intervene. We show… more →
Early Evidence on Employer Responses to College Student Use of Generative AI
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education, Higher education, Returns to education and skillsWe conduct a survey experiment on professionals with hiring experience to investigate how employers respond to students' use of generative AI in higher education. Prior to respondents reviewing two resumes, they were randomized into a control group or one of two treatment groups. One treatment… more →
The Effects of Course-Integrated AI Tutoring on Student Performance and Engagement: A Randomized University Trial
Jing Liu, Tracy Sweet, Marty Haoyuan Chen, Jonathan Engelberg, Megan Masters, Martyn Clark, Axel Persaud, Alia Lancaster, Jeffrey Hollingsworth, Jennifer King Rice.Topics: Student LearningWe evaluate access to a course-integrated generative AI (GenAI) tutor in a randomized controlled trial involving 2,379 undergraduate students and 30 instructors across multiple disciplines in a large U.S. public university. Among sections of the same course, tutor access reduced final grades by… more →
High School College-Conduciveness and Its Association with the Top Ten Percent Students’ Academic Profiles
High school college-conducive resources shape students’ college readiness, which may explain the relative disadvantage racialized minority and low-income students face in accessing selective universities. Texas Top Ten Percent Plan (TTP) aims to bridge this gap by conditioning admission on class… more →
Non-traditional Student Advising Before College: Lessons from Navigate Reconnect
Prospective college students benefit from tailored advising and guidance about whether, where, and how to enroll. Support for college planning drops sharply after students leave high school, however, leaving non-traditional students largely on their own. We study Navigate Reconnect, a Tennessee… more →
One Fell Through the Safety Net: Embeddedness and Take Up of Social Benefits
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Higher educationThe U.S. social safety net comprises a patchwork quilt of welfare programs, but not all eligible beneficiaries receive aid. Incomplete take-up suggests that some children and families are not receiving access to the education, healthcare, housing, and income needed to break the cycle of poverty… more →
Incidence and Effects of Reported University Student Absences
Topics: Student Well-BeingTags: Absenteeism, Higher educationDespite the potential for illness or bereavement to significantly disrupt education, there is little evidence about the frequency and impact of absences in higher education. Using administrative data from a large public university in the United States, we analyze the incidence of reported… more →
Is Calculus a Gatekeeper in Selective Engineering Admissions? Insights from a Lab-in-the-Field Experiment with Admissions Officers
Lower-resourced high schools are far less likely to offer calculus, raising concerns that calculus availability may be a gatekeeper in selective college admissions. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment (292 admissions officers, 1768 total observations), we investigate whether engineering… more →
The Access–Enrollment Disconnect in Corequisite Math Reform: Causal Evidence and Stakeholder Perspectives from a Community College
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThis study examines a statewide developmental education reform in Virginia that allows students who would have been placed in standalone remedial math to enroll directly in college-level math with corequisite support. Although corequisite support has been widely adopted and generally promising,… more →
How Colleges and Universities are Adopting AI in Higher Education: A Global Comparative Analysis
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Generative artificial intelligence (AI) in education, Higher education, International and comparativeArtificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI have become central strategic priorities for universities worldwide, yet the extent to which institutions formally embed AI into their governance, academic, and policy structures remains unclear. This study examines the institutionalization of AI… more →
The Disparate Impacts of Academic Probation
Institutional rules that appear neutral can produce unequal outcomes when applied to students who differ in how they respond to them. We study this in the context of academic probation, a policy used by nearly every U.S. college to warn students whose grades fall below a fixed threshold that… more →
Equity in context: Institutional agency in targeting student supports in Massachusetts community colleges
How do related, but independent community colleges operationalize and implement an equity-oriented initiative? In 2021, Massachusetts established the SUCCESS initiative to provide non-financial student supports in all 15 of the state’s public community colleges. This paper draws on 35 interviews… more →
The Role of Career Advising in High School in Shaping the Aspirations of First-Generation Students
College aspirations often form by 8th grade, yet first-generation students—those whose parents lack post-secondary education—miss out on resources continuing-generation peers use to make informed decisions about their futures. School-based career advising can help fill this gap. Using 2018 PISA… more →
More STEM Credentials at What Cost? Unpacking 2-Year Colleges’ Response to the STEM Incentive in Performance-Based Funding
Tags: Higher educationObjective: Performance-based funding (PBF) has gained significant traction in US higher education over the past few decades. It aims to improve student outcomes by tying a portion of state funding to outcomes (e.g., graduation, retention). In recent years, an increasing number… more →
Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship?
Tags: Curriculum, Higher educationWe study whether Democratic college professors make their students more liberal. We link voter data to salary records from 33 state flagships and show that faculty skew Democratic, especially in the humanities and social sciences. We then use student transcripts from one flagship to estimate… more →
An Analysis of Academic School Spending in Higher Education
Tags: Higher educationAcademic schools, such as colleges and their constituent departments within larger universities, are increasingly being expected to increase revenues and reduce expenditures in a challenging financial environment. Yet relatively little is known about schools’ resource allocation decisions. In… more →
Better Together? Female Instructors, Female Advisors, and Women’s Persistence in Economics
Female instructors and female advisors each matter for women’s persistence in economics. We ask whether the two work better together than apart and whether this is specific to women. Using administrative records from a broad-access public university, we combine quasi-random instructor assignment… more →
“A Ragtag Team of Like[-Minded] Individuals Who Are Willing to Help”: The Implementation and Evolution of Student Support Services at Community Colleges with Promise Programs
Tags: Higher education, Student supportsAs promise programs have become increasingly popular at community colleges, these institutions have either created or repurposed student services for their promise students, in addition to covering their tuition and fees. Using a multiple case study design, we interviewed 32 community college… more →
The Labor Market Value of Community College Bachelor’s Degrees: Initial Evidence from a Resume Audit Study in Early Childhood Education
Community colleges are more financially, academically, and geographically accessible than four-year colleges. Despite most community college students intending to earn a bachelor’s degree, few transfer to a four-year institution and even fewer earn bachelor’s degrees, leading policymakers to… more →