Higher education
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 →
Some Promises are Worth More than Others: How “Free Community College” Programs impact Postsecondary Participation, Destinations, and Degree Completion
“Free college” programs are widespread in American higher education. They are discussed as addressing college access, affordability, inequality, and skills shortages. Many are last-dollar tuition guarantees restricted to use at single community colleges. Using student-level data spanning the… more →
College Students and Career Aspirations: Nudging Student Interest in Teaching
We survey undergraduate students at a large public university to understand the pecuniary and non-pecuniary factors driving their college major and career decisions with a focus on K-12 teaching. While the average student reports there is a 6% chance they will pursue teaching, almost 27% report… more →
The Role of Emergency Financial Relief Funding in Improving Low-Income Students’ Academic and Financial Outcomes Across Demographic Characteristics
This quasi-experimental study examined the effectiveness of a one-time emergency financial relief program among Pell Grant eligible undergraduate students in Spring 2015 pursuing their first bachelor’s degree across academic and financial outcomes. The academic outcomes included retention to the… more →
How Powerful Are Promises? A Systematic Review of the Causal Mechanisms and Outcomes of "Free College" Programs in the United States
Tags: Higher education, Efficacy“Free college” (sometimes called Promise) programs are common in U.S. higher education. Reviewing 88 studies of 25 state and local programs, I provide a nuanced picture of the mechanisms through which these programs may work and their likely effects on students, communities, and colleges. Some… more →
What is a college “Promise” program? The creation and transformation of a concept, 2005-2022
Tags: Higher educationPromise programs are discussed as a policy movement that began with the 2005 launch of the Kalamazoo Promise. Since then, programs bearing the Promise label or sharing similar features have spread across the higher educational landscape, appearing in most states and across postsecondary sectors… more →
Exploring the Relationship Between Test-Optional Admissions and Selectivity and Enrollment Outcomes During the Pandemic
Kelly Rosinger, Dominique J. Baker, Joseph Sturm, Wan Yu, Julie J. Park, OiYan Poon, Brian Heseung Kim, Stephanie Breen.Tags: Higher educationMost selective colleges implemented test-optional admissions during the pandemic, making college entrance exam scores optional for applicants. We draw on descriptive, two-way fixed effects, and event study methods to examine variation in test-optional implementation during the pandemic and how… more →
Experimental Evidence of the Impact of Re-Enrollment Campaigns on Long-Term Academic Outcomes
Tags: Higher education, EquityMost students who begin at a community college do not complete their desired credential. Many former students fail to graduate due to various barriers rather than their academic performance. To encourage previously successful non-completers to re-enroll and eventually graduate, a growing number… more →