Post-secondary education
Incidence and Effects of Reported University Student Absences
Despite the potential for illness or bereavement to significantly disrupt education, there is little evidence about the frequency and impact of absences in higher education. Using administrative data from a large public university in the United States, we analyze the incidence of reported… 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 Access–Enrollment Disconnect in Corequisite Math Reform: Causal Evidence and Stakeholder Perspectives from a Community College
This study examines a statewide developmental education reform in Virginia that allows students who would have been placed in standalone remedial math to enroll directly in college-level math with corequisite support. Although corequisite support has been widely adopted and generally promising,… more →
How Colleges and Universities are Adopting AI in Higher Education: A Global Comparative Analysis
Artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI have become central strategic priorities for universities worldwide, yet the extent to which institutions formally embed AI into their governance, academic, and policy structures remains unclear. This study examines the institutionalization of AI… 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 →
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 →
More STEM Credentials at What Cost? Unpacking 2-Year Colleges’ Response to the STEM Incentive in Performance-Based Funding
Objective: Performance-based funding (PBF) has gained significant traction in US higher education over the past few decades. It aims to improve student outcomes by tying a portion of state funding to outcomes (e.g., graduation, retention). In recent years, an increasing number… 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 →
An Applied Researchers’ Guide to Estimating Effects from Blocked Cluster Randomized Trials: Estimands, Estimators, and Estimates
Blocked cluster randomized trials (CRTs) are widely used to evaluate educational interventions. In such trials, researchers face critical choices about how to define and estimate the average treatment effect (ATE). These choices—both the estimand (e.g., person- vs. cluster-weighted) and the… more →
An Analysis of Academic School Spending in Higher Education
Academic schools, such as colleges and their constituent departments within larger universities, are increasingly being expected to increase revenues and reduce expenditures in a challenging financial environment. Yet relatively little is known about schools’ resource allocation decisions. In… 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 →
Resegregating the Academy: How Anti-DEI Politics Dismantle Faculty Racial Equity Infrastructure
Since 2021, state legislatures and then the federal government have moved to dismantle programs and offices built over seventy-five years to reduce barriers for racially marginalized people in American higher education—losses largely examined in scholarship and media piecemeal, one policy or… more →
Does Relative Performance Feedback Improve Academic Outcomes? Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial in a Spanish University
The effects of relative performance feedback on student achievement remain contested in the economics of education literature. Some studies find that providing students with information about their standing relative to peers improves academic outcomes, while others show negative effects driven… more →
Do Neighbors Shape the Sticker Price? Spatial Competition and State Funding in Cost of Attendance Reporting Over Time
Federal law requires U.S. postsecondary institutions to publish a Cost of Attendance (COA) that serves as the legal ceiling on a student's federal financial aid eligibility, yet off-campus living costs are estimated by institutions at their own discretion, with no standardized methodology or… more →
First Impressions Matter: Instructor Gender and Women’s Persistence in Economics
Using near-random assignment of students to instructors in introductory economics at a broad-access public university, we study how instructor gender affects women’s persistence in economics. Female instructors close roughly 40 percent of the gender gap in advanced economics course-taking, with… more →
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 →
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 →