Post-secondary education
The Disciplinary Differences in the Characteristics And Effects of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
Using data with detailed instructor employment information from a state college system, this study examines disciplinary variations in the characteristics and effects of non-tenure-track faculty hired through temporary and long-term employment. We identify substantial differences in the… more →
Signals, Information, and the Value of College Names
Colleges can send signals about their quality by adopting new, more alluring names. We study how this affects college choice and labor market performance of college graduates. Administrative data show name-changing colleges enroll higher-aptitude students, with larger effects for alluring-but-… more →
Parental Resources and College Attendance: Evidence from Lottery Wins
We examine U.S. children whose parents won the lottery to trace out the effect of financial resources on college attendance. The analysis leverages federal tax and financial aid records and substantial variation in win size and timing. While per-dollar effects are modest, the relationship is… more →
Pushing College Advising Forward: Experimental Evidence on Intensive Advising and College Success
While Hispanic students represent the fasting-growing segment of the American school-age population, substantial gaps exist in college enrollment and Bachelor’s attainment between Hispanic and White and Asian students. Numerous factors contribute to these disparities and disproportionally affect… more →
The Academic Origins of Economics Faculty
We use roster data of 96 top U.S. economics departments to document the academic origins of their tenure-track faculty. Academic origins may have implications for how undergraduate (B.A.) and doctoral (Ph.D.) students are trained and placed, as well as the type of research produced. We find that… more →
Capacity and flexibility in community college CTE programs: program offerings and student success
This article asks whether small changes to community college courses and programs can help improve student outcomes. We use administrative data from the California Community College system, including millions of student records and detailed course-level information for most career-technical… more →
The Effects of Financial Aid Loss on Persistence and Graduation: A Multi-Dimensional Regression Discontinuity Approach
For years Georgia's HOPE Scholarship program provided full tuition scholarships to high achieving students. State budgetary shortfalls reduced its generosity in 2011. Under the new rules, only students meeting more rigorous merit-based criteria would retain the original scholarship covering full… more →
The Effect of Course Shutouts on Community College Students: Evidence from Waitlist Cutoffs
One frequently cited yet understudied channel through which money matters for college students is course availability- colleges may respond to budgetary pressure by reducing course offerings. Open admissions policies, binding class size constraints, and heavy reliance on state funding may make… more →
Using Semantic Similarity to Assess Adherence and Replicability of Intervention Delivery
Researchers are rarely satisfied to learn only whether an intervention works, they also want to understand why and under what circumstances interventions produce their intended effects. These questions have led to increasing calls for implementation research to be… more →
Design-Based Approaches to Causal Replication Studies
Recent interest to promote and support replication efforts assume that there is well-established methodological guidance for designing and implementing these studies. However, no such consensus exists in the methodology literature. This article addresses these challenges by describing design-… more →
State Investment in Higher Education: Effects on Human Capital Formation, Student Debt, and Long-Term Financial Outcomes of Students
Most public colleges and universities rely heavily on state financial support. As state budgets have tightened in recent decades, appropriations for higher education have declined substantially. Despite concerns expressed by policymakers and scholars that the declines in state support have… more →
The Impact of Merit Aid on College Choice and Degree Attainment: Reexamining Florida’s Bright Futures Program
We replicate and extend prior work on Florida’s Bright Futures merit aid scholarship to consider its effect on college enrollment and degree completion. We estimate causal impacts using a regression discontinuity design to exploit SAT thresholds that strongly determine eligibility. We find no… more →
Happy Together? The Peer Effects of Dual Enrollment Students on Community College Student Outcomes
Nationally, 15% of first-time community college students were high school dual enrollment (DE) students, which raises concerns about how high school peers might influence college enrollees. Using administrative data from a large state community college system, we examine whether being exposed to… more →
Negative Impacts From the Shift to Online Learning During the COVID-19 Crisis: Evidence from a Statewide Community College System
The COVID-19 pandemic led to an abrupt shift from in-person to virtual instruction in Spring 2020. We use two complementary difference-in differences frameworks, one that leverages within-instructor-by-course variation on whether students started their Spring 2020 courses in person or online and… more →
Immigrant Integration in the United States: The Role of Adult English Language Training
While current debates center on whether and how to admit immigrants to the United States, little attention has been paid to interventions designed to help immigrants integrate after they arrive. Public adult education programs are the primary policy lever for building the language skills of the… more →
Examining STEM Performance within a Comprehensive College Transition Program
We examine the impact of the Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC), a comprehensive college transition program serving students with a variety of majors, on students’ science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)-related outcomes. We use an explanatory mixed-methods design, which… more →
Examining the Relationship between Psychosocial and Academic Outcomes in Higher Education: A Descriptive Analysis
This paper estimates the relationship between students’ psychosocial and academic outcomes during their first three years enrolled at public, four-year institutions. Our sample is comprised of students from low-income backgrounds who applied for a competitive scholarship and enrolled at a four-… more →
Disproportionate Burden: Estimating the Cost of FAFSA Verification for Public Colleges and Universities
Verification is a federally mandated process that requires selected students to further attest that the information reported on their FAFSA is accurate and complete. In this brief, we estimate institutional costs of administrating the FAFSA verification mandate and consider variation in costs by… more →
Taking It to the Limit: Effects of Increased Student Loan Availability on Attainment, Earnings, and Financial Well-Being
Growing 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 →
Incentivizing Equity? The Effects of Performance-Based Funding on Race-Based Gaps in College Completion
Performance-based funding models for higher education, which tie state support for institutions to performance on student outcomes, have proliferated in recent decades. Some states have designed these policies to also address educational attainment gaps by including bonus payments for… more →