Post-secondary education
The Importance of a Helping Hand in Education and in Life
This paper discusses the importance of incorporating personal assistance into interventions aimed at improving long-term education and labor market success. While existing research demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of low-touch behavioral nudges, this paper argues that the dynamic nature of… more →
Strategic Disclosure of Test Scores: Evidence from US College Admissions
The impact of test-optional college admissions policies depends on whether applicants act strategically in disclosing test scores. We analyze individual applicants’ standardized test scores and disclosure behavior to 50 major US colleges for entry in fall 2021, when Covid-19 prompted widespread… more →
Out-of-State Enrollment, Financial Aid and Academic Outcomes: Evidence from Wisconsin
Scholars disagree about the effect out-of-state university students have on potential in-state students. Despite paying a premium to attend state universities, researchers argue that out-of-state students may come at a cost to in-state students by negatively affecting academic quality or by… more →
Experimental Evidence on "Direct Admissions" from Four States: Impacts on College Application and Enrollment
Complexity and uncertainty in the college application process contribute to longstanding racial and socioeconomic disparities in enrollment. We leverage a large-scale experiment that combines an early guarantee of college admission with a proactive nudge, fee waiver, and structural application… more →
Diversity Trends Among Faculty in STEM and non-STEM Fields at Selective Public Universities in the U.S. from 2016 to 2023
During the 2015-16 academic year, racial protests swept across college campuses in the U.S. These protests were followed by large university investments in initiatives to promote diversity, which combined with existing diversity dynamics, have helped to shape recent faculty diversity trends. We… more →
“Non-Submitters:” Evidence on Students Who Start but Don’t Complete a College Application
Not all students who could benefit from college apply. With novel data on over 1.2 million high schoolers, we show that nearly 25% start but never complete a college application. We use descriptive techniques, data visualizations, and fixed effects models to explore this population of college-… more →
EMERGEing Educational Opportunities: The Effects of Social Capital and Nudging on Selective College Outcomes
There is a growing debate in social science and education policy research on how to improve college access for high-performing students from low-income or first-generation backgrounds. While some studies suggest that providing information to students impacts college access, other studies do not… more →
COVID-19 Diagnoses and University Student Performance: Evidence from Linked Administrative Health and Education Data
We analyze the impact of COVID-19 diagnoses on student grades, retention, and on-time graduation at a large public university. Even though COVID-19 rarely causes major health complications for a typical university student, diagnosis and quarantine may cause non-trivial disruptions to learning.… more →
Humanizing Policy Implementation in Higher Education Through an Equity-Centered Approach
With an urgency to leverage existing and emerging policy reforms to improve student outcomes by centering educational equity, this manuscript explores the critical role of policy implementation in higher education–specifically in community colleges. In doing so, we explore historical and… more →
The impact of federal administrative burdens on college enrollment
Government programs impose eligibility requirements to balance the goals of improving welfare while minimizing waste. We study the impact of eligibility monitoring in the context of Federal Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) submissions, where students may be subject to “verification”… more →
Community Colleges and Careers: Evidence from Nursing School Lotteries
I estimate the effect of attending an associate's degree in nursing program on nursing licensure. I use student-level academic data for all California community college students, matched to public records on all nursing licenses earned in the state. I produce causal estimates using random… more →
Do Women Still Earn Less than Men after College Graduation: Evidence from the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study 1993 Cohort
Even though women have continuously caught up with men in education attainment and labor market participation since the 1970s, the wage gap between men and women still universally exists today. Do female college graduates still earn less than their male counterparts if men’s and women’s “… more →
College Counseling in the Classroom: Randomized Evaluation of a Teacher-Based Approach to College Advising
Guidance counselors provide the main source of college advising for low-income high school students, but are woefully understaffed in high-need schools. This paper evaluates an approach to school-based college advising that relies on teachers rather than counselors. Using a randomized control… more →
PLUS or Minus? The Effect of Graduate School Loans on Access, Attainment, and Prices
In 2006, the federal government effectively uncapped student borrowing for graduate programs with the introduction of the Graduate PLUS loan program. Access to additional federal loans increased graduate students’ borrowing and shifted the composition of their loans from private to federal debt… more →
Race below the fold: Race-evasiveness in the news media’s coverage of student loans
The media discourse on student loans plays a significant role in the way that policy actors conceptualize challenges and potential solutions related to student debt. This study examines the racialized language in student loan news articles published in eight major news outlets between 2006 and… more →
Debt Moratoria: Evidence from Student Loan Forbearance
We evaluate the effects of the 2020 student debt moratorium that paused payments for student loan borrowers. Using administrative credit panel data, we show that the payment pause led to a sharp drop in student loan payments and delinquencies for borrowers subject to the debt moratorium, as well… more →
Rich Grad, Poor Grad: Family Background and College Major Choice
Expected earnings matter for college major choices, and majors differ in both their average earnings and the age profile of their earnings. We show that students' family background is strongly related to the earnings paths of the major they choose. Students with more educated parents, especially… more →
Estimating the Impact of Temporary COVID-19 College Closures on the 2020 Census Count
Temporary college closures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic created an exodus of students from college towns just as the decennial census count was getting underway. We use aggregate cellular mobility data to evaluate if this population movement affected the distributional accuracy of the… more →
A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Corequisite English Developmental Education: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial in Texas Community Colleges
We estimate the societal costs associated with corequisite and traditional pre-requisite English developmental education and compare them to societal benefits. Our context is the randomized controlled trial conducted by Miller et al. (2022) that estimated the effects of three different… more →
Who Scars the Easiest? College Quality and the Effects of Graduating into a Recession
Graduating from college into a recession is associated with earnings losses, but less is known about how these effects vary across colleges. Using restricted-use data from the National Survey of College Graduates, we study how the effects of graduating into worse economic conditions vary over… more →