Pathways to and Through Postsecondary
Does Liberal Education Produce Engaged Citizens? The Relationship Between Curricular Breadth, Depth, and Democratic Outcomes
Liberal education is often touted as an ideal format for preparing students for civic engagement, yet this claim is seldom empirically tested. In this study, we quantify the relationship between college students’ liberal education, measured by the breadth and depth of their curriculum, and… more →
Aligned Pathways, Unequal Earnings: Gendered Transitions from Community College to Work
States increasingly use financial aid policy to steer students into designated high-demand workforce fields, yet evidence on whether these fields offer stronger labor-market pathways remains limited. We study Virginia's Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead (G3) initiative, which provides tuition… more →
Variation in Post-Pandemic Postsecondary Transitions across Academic Subgroups
We examine how trends in postsecondary readiness and enrollment from pre- to post-pandemic differ across student subgroups defined by pre-pandemic (8th grade) achievement levels. Using individual-level data from North Carolina and interrupted time series approaches, we find that students with… more →
Improvements in Using Distance to Predict College Enrollment
Geographic 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 →
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 →
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 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 →
Local Signals in a Global Tournament: Information Frictions, Optimism, and College Completion
Families frequently receive local signals about children’s skills, such as class rank in high school, yet the college market in which most students ultimately compete is much broader. Using nationally-representative data, we show that student effort, parental investment, and beliefs about… 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 →
Translating Policy into Opportunity: School Counselors and the Implementation of CTE-Focused Dual Enrollment Pathways
Dual enrollment programs have expanded rapidly in the United States as a mechanism to improve college readiness, accelerate time to credential, and support postsecondary transitions. Yet empirical research on dual enrollment has largely centered on academic coursework offered through community… more →
Do Faculty Affect Student Partisanship?
We 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 →
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
As 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 Role of Course Delivery Modality in Dual Enrollment
Dual enrollment, or college courses offered in high school, can be delivered using a variety of modalities. Conducted in North Carolina, this study uses a statewide dataset to examine participation in and outcomes for three different delivery modalities for general academic courses and Career… 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 →
Course Failure in Dual Enrollment and the Impact on College-Going
Dual enrollment (DE) has expanded rapidly as a strategy to broaden access to college-level coursework, particularly for students historically excluded from advanced academic opportunities. This study examines the characteristics of students who fail dual enrollment, the consequences of failure,… more →
Career and Technical Education as a Strategy to Improve Long-term Outcomes for English Language Learners
Career and Technical Education (CTE) has emerged as a strategy to enhance college and labor market outcomes for all students, yet little is known about its implications for multilingual students classified as English Learners (ML-ELs). Using longitudinal data from Massachusetts, this study… more →
Boosting Dual Enrollment Participation by Simplifying Access for High School Students
Despite the promise of dual enrollment to expand college access, racial disparities in participation persist, and limited research examines policies designed to reduce access barriers. Using statewide student-level data from 2013–14 to 2021–22 and difference-in-differences approaches, I estimate… more →