Higher education
Who Scars the Easiest? College Quality and the Effects of Graduating into a Recession
Graduating from college into a recession is associated with earnings losses, but less is known about how these effects vary across colleges. Using restricted-use data from the National Survey of College Graduates, we study how college quality influences the effects of graduating into worse… more →
Funding Shocks and University Behavior: A synthetic control evaluation of Colorado's College Opportunity Fund
Tags: Higher educationDiscussion of the rising price of higher education and associated student debt in America has been a key feature of political discourse in recent memory, with renewed interest sparked by the announcement of the student loan forgiveness plan. Federal student debt has increased by 756% since 1995… more →
Experimental Estimates of College Coaching on Postsecondary Re-enrollment
College attendance has increased significantly over the last few decades, but dropout rates remain high, with fewer than half of all adults ultimately obtaining a postsecondary credential. This project investigates whether one-on-one college coaching improves college attendance and completion… more →
Forging a path to college persistence: An experimental evaluation of the Detroit Promise Path program
Stacey L. Brockman, Jasmina Camo-Biogradlija, Alyssa Ratledge, Rebekah O’Donoghue, Micah Y. Baum, Brian A. Jacob.Detroit students who obtain a college degree overcome many obstacles to do so. This paper reports the results of a randomized evaluation of a program meant to provide support to low-income community college students. The Detroit Promise Path (DPP) program was designed to complement an existing… more →
Could shifting the margin between community college and university enrollment expand and diversify university degree production in STEM fields?
We examine the potential to expand and diversify the production of university STEM degrees by shifting the margin of initial enrollment between community colleges and 4-year universities. Our analysis is based on statewide administrative microdata from the Missouri Department of Higher Education… more →
Student Demand For Relative Performance Feedback: Evidence from a Field Experiment
Topics: Student LearningTags: Motivation, Higher educationWe administer a survey to study students' preferences for relative performance feedback in an introductory economics class. To do so, we elicit students' willingness to pay for/avoid learning their rank on a midterm exam. Our results show that 10% of students are willing to pay to avoid learning… more →
The Impact of Armed Conflict on College Students
Given the spike of homicides in conflict zones of Colombia after the 2016 peace agreement, I study the causal effect of violence on college test scores. Using a difference-in-difference design with heterogeneous effects, I show how this increase in violence had a negative effect on college… more →
Are Four-Year Public Colleges Engines for Economic Mobility? Evidence from Statewide Admissions Thresholds
Four-year public colleges may play an important role in supporting intergenerational mobility by providing an accessible path to a bachelor’s degree and increasing students' earnings. Leveraging a midsize state’s GPA- and SAT-based admissions thresholds for the four-year public sector, I use a… more →
Affirmative Action and Its Race-Neutral Alternatives
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: Higher education, EquityAs affirmative action loses political feasibility, many universities have implemented race-neutral alternatives like top percent policies and holistic review to increase enrollment among disadvantaged students. I study these policies’ application, admission, and enrollment effects using… more →
Are Algorithms Biased in Education? Exploring Racial Bias in Predicting Community College Student Success
Predictive analytics are increasingly pervasive in higher education. However, algorithmic bias has the potential to reinforce racial inequities in postsecondary success. We provide a comprehensive and translational investigation of algorithmic bias in two separate prediction models -- one… more →
Labor Market Effects of Short-Cycle Higher Education Programs: Lessons from Colombia
Tags: Higher educationThis 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
Tags: Higher education, Human capitalThis 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
Tags: Higher education, Human capitalShort-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
Tags: Higher educationDespite 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
Tags: Higher educationShort-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
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe 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?
Tags: Higher education, EquityPrediction 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
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceMany 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 →