Search and Filter
Returns to education and skills
The Importance of Cognitive Domains and the Returns to Schooling in South Africa: Evidence from Two Labor Surveys
Topics: Student LearningNumerous studies have considered the important role of cognition in estimating the returns to schooling. How cognitive abilities affect schooling may have important policy implications, especially in developing countries during periods of increasing educational attainment. Using two longitudinal… more →
Taking It to the Limit: Effects of Increased Student Loan Availability on Attainment, Earnings, and Financial Well-Being
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceGrowing reliance on student loans and repayment difficulties have raised concerns of a student debt crisis in the United States. However, little is known about the effects of student borrowing on human capital and long-run financial well-being. We use variation induced by recent expansions in… more →
Unfinished Business? Academic and Labor Market Profile of Adults with Substantial College Credits But No Degree
Recent state policy efforts have focused on increasing attainment among adults with some college but no degree (SCND). Yet little is actually known about the SCND population. Using data from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), we provide the first detailed profile on the academic,… more →
The Economic Impact of Access to Public Four-Year Colleges
We provide the first estimated economic impacts of students’ access to an entire sector of public higher education in the U.S. Approximately half of Georgia high school graduates who enroll in college do so in the state’s public four-year sector, which requires minimum SAT scores for admission.… more →
Winners and Losers? The Effect of Gaining and Losing Access to Selective Colleges on Education and Labor Market Outcomes
Selective college admissions are fundamentally a question of tradeoffs: Given capacity, admitting one student means rejecting another. Research to date has generally estimated average effects of college selectivity, and has been unable to distinguish between the effects on students gaining… more →
School Sector and Climate: Evidence from New York
Topics: School ChoicePublic charter schools could theoretically experience fewer school climate problems than district-run public schools because of additional competitive pressures, autonomy, and improved matches between schools and students. Using publicly available data from the New York State Education… more →
Identifying Preferences for Equal College Access, Income, and Income Equality
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceRevealed preferences for equal college access may be due to beliefs that equal access increases societal income or income equality. To isolate preferences for those goods, we implement an online discrete choice experiment using social statistics generated from true variation among commuting… more →
The Long-Run Impacts of Special Education
Topics: Student LearningOver 13 percent of US students participate in Special Education (SE) programs annually, at a cost of $40 billion. However, the effect of SE placements remains unclear. This paper uses administrative data from Texas to examine the long-run effect of reducing SE access. Our research design… more →
The Value of Using Early-Career Earnings Data in the College Scorecard to Guide College Choices
Policymakers are increasingly including early-career earnings data in consumer-facing college search tools to help students and families make more informed post-secondary education decisions. We offer new evidence on the degree to which existing college-specific earnings data equips consumers… more →
Superficially Coupled Systems: The Organizational Production of Inequality in Higher Education
The rise of accountability standards has pressed higher education organizations to oversee the production and publication of data on student outcomes more closely than in the past. However, the most common measure of student outcomes, average bachelor's degree completion rates, potentially… more →
Altered Attitudes and Actions: Social-Emotional Effects of Multiple Arts Field Trips
Topics: Student Well-BeingIn recent decades, institutions, teachers, and students report a decline in field trip attendance. The impact of this decline on educational and societal outcomes such as social-emotional skill acquisition is unknown. Social-emotional learning (SEL) are skills thought to be important to life and… more →
Spillover Impacts on Education from Employment Guarantees
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernancePrograms that provide lower-skill employment are a popular anti-poverty strategy in developing countries, with India's employment-guarantee program (MGNREGA) employing adults in 23% of Indian households. A potential concern is that guaranteeing lower-skill employment opportunities may… more →
Is Education Consumption or Investment? Implications for School Competition
Topics: School ChoiceFriedman (1955) argued that giving parents freedom to choose schools would improve education. His argument was simple and compelling because it extended results from markets for consumer goods to education. We review the evidence, which yields surprisingly mixed results on Friedman's prediction… more →
Elusive Longer-Run Impacts of Head Start: Replications Within and Across Cohorts
Topics: Student LearningUsing an additional decade of CNLSY data, this study replicated and extended Deming’s (2009) evaluation of Head Start’s life-cycle skill formation impacts in three ways. Extending the measurement interval for Deming’s adulthood outcomes, we found no statistically significant… more →