Pathways to and Through Postsecondary
Success Begets Success: The Dynamic Treatment Effects of Financial Aid Tournaments
Financial aid programs in higher education vary widely in design, including how aid is structured and the timing of provision. This paper studies the impact of financial aid provided as a repeated tournament and its dynamic treatment effects. Pooling administrative data that captures 32% of all… more →
Growing Up in Disability-Dense School Districts: Long-Term Impacts of Childhood Exposure on Educational Attainment
This study examines whether growing up in a district with a higher share of people with disabilities shapes long-term educational attainment for children with and without disabilities. Using administrative data on more than 170,000 children from six Texas kindergarten cohorts (1994–1999) who… more →
Meeting People Where They Are: Experimental Evidence on Embedded Supports, Service Use, and Educational Outcomes
Many public services suffer from persistently low take-up despite high potential returns. A growing body of evidence suggests that information alone does little to close this gap; instead, hassle costs and default access points may be binding constraints on utilization. We test whether… more →
Does Coursework Matter? Uncovering the Role of Skills in the Returns to College
The continuing shift of the U.S. economy toward a high-skill base has increased the demand for college-educated workers. To understand how higher education prepares students for this evolving economy, a large body of literature in labor economics has focused on the causes and consequences of… more →
Teacher-student relationships and adult outcomes: Developmental cascades via childhood executive function and behavioral dysregulation
Longitudinal data were examined to test associations between teacher-student relationships and adult outcomes, as well as mechanisms underlying these associations. Results from the NICHD-SECCYD (N=1364; 52% male; 76% White; 13% Black; 6% Hispanic; 5% other; data collection took place in the U.S… more →
The Impact of the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard Decision on Undergraduate Demographics
The 2023 Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (SFFA) effectively ended the explicit consideration of race in college admissions. This paper examines the impact of SFFA on the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic composition of undergraduate… more →
Student and Faculty Same-Race Matching at Research Universities
Racial disparities in college persistence and completion remain substantial, yet relatively little evidence exists on how student–faculty interactions contribute to these gaps in research universities. This study examines the prevalence and consequences of student–faculty same-race matching… more →
The Effects of Capped Piece-Rate Teacher Bonuses: Evidence from Advanced Placement
I study a proficiency-based incentive program that rewards Advanced Placement (AP) teachers a piece-rate for each student scoring 3 or higher on the standardized exam. Using student-course-level administrative data and exploiting both withinand across-teacher variation, I find the program… more →
State Merit Aid: Effects on College Enrollment, Labor Market Outcomes, and Government Revenue
This paper evaluates long-run effects of state merit aid programs that subsidize in-state college attendance. Using national survey data on college enrollment and U.S. Census data, I exploit staggered program adoption across states. Merit aid shifts students from out-of-state to in-state… more →
Unpacking the Long-Term Impact of Holistic Supports for Community College Students
This paper presents longer-term findings from a randomized controlled trial of One Million Degrees (OMD), a comprehensive support program for community college students in the Chicago metro area that provides financial, academic, personal, and professional assistance. Results from an initial… more →
The Effects of An Automatic Notification Tool to Increase Participation in Advanced High School Courses: Results from a Large-Scale Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial
Taking advanced courses in high school is associated with many positive high school and college outcomes. States and school districts are increasingly interested in more systematic approaches to identify qualified students for advanced course work. We developed an automatic notification tool,… more →
The Effect of Merit-Based Free Community College
Free community college is often promoted as a way to expand access and reduce student debt, but may have unintended consequences if it reduces bachelor’s degree completion for students diverted from better resourced four-year universities. By examining a meritbased free community college program… more →
"Feel" as a Determinant of College Choice: Evidence from Campus Tour Weather
The feeling or impression that students get about enrolling in a particular college may be an important determinant of their college application decision. Combining institutional records on college campus tour participants over the last decade with hourly weather information, we leverage tour… more →
Dual-Enrollment Dosage Design: Conceptualization and Measurement of Student Profiles and School Structures
Dual-enrollment (“DE”), in which students enroll in college-level courses and receive college credit in high school, has become one of the most prominent strategies for promoting college access and readiness. DE models range from a la carte options or "random acts of dual-enrollment" to highly… more →
Are Work-Based Professional Skills Associated with Postsecondary Entrance and Persistence? Novel Evidence from the Cristo Rey Network
Professional skills such as initiative, communication, and adaptability are thought to shape postsecondary success, but most evidence comes from self- or teacher-reported measures collected in school settings. This study uses employer ratings of students’ professional skills gathered through… more →
The Causal Effects of Federal Work-Study Offers on College Enrollment and Program Participation
Federal Work-Study (FWS) is a distinctive type of financial aid, originally intended to both reduce financial constraints and improve access to career-relevant job opportunities. Prior research on FWS has primarily focused on post-enrollment, post-program-participation outcomes, leaving… more →
Community College Bachelor's Degrees: How CCB Graduates' Earnings Compare to AAs and BAs
We provide the first national descriptive analysis of the economic value of Community College Baccalaureate (CCB) degrees by examining graduates’ early-career earnings, the costs of completing these programs, and the alignment between field of study and subsequent employment. Using… more →
Making the Implicit Explicit: An Experiment with Implicit Gender Stereotypes and College Major Choice
We study whether making college students aware of their implicit gender–STEM stereotypes affects their pursuit of a STEM degree. In a field experiment at a large, selective U.S. university, over 800 undergraduates completed a gender–STEM Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a detailed survey on… more →
College Enrollment Patterns After SFFA v. Harvard
We study how U.S. high school students’ patterns of college entry changed in the first year after the Supreme Court’s 2023 SFFA v. Harvard ruling. Drawing on a rich dataset linking more than 12 million domestic PSAT, SAT, and AP takers in the 2021-2024 high school graduation cohorts to their… more →
Scaling High-Touch College Advising: Causal Evidence and Program Design Insights from Tennessee
College advising can raise postsecondary enrollment, but few programs prove effective at scale. We leverage the rollout of a statewide, professionally staffed, and centrally coordinated college advising program (Advise TN) across 33 communities to estimate causal impacts on enrollment,… more →