Post-secondary education
The narrowing gender wage gap among faculty at public universities in the U.S.
We study the conditional gender wage gap among faculty at public research universities in the U.S. We begin by using a cross-sectional dataset from 2016 to replicate the long-standing finding in research that conditional on rich controls, female faculty earn less than their male colleagues. Next… more →
Grads on the Go: Measuring College-Specific Labor Markets for Graduates
This paper introduces a new measure of the labor markets served by colleges and universities across the United States. About 50 percent of recent college graduates are living and working in the metro area nearest the institution they attended, with this figure climbing to 67 percent in-… more →
Documenting Their Decisions: How Undocumented Students Enroll and Persist in College
The absence of federal support leaves undocumented students reliant on state policies to financially support their postsecondary education. We descriptively examine the postsecondary trajectories of tens of thousands of undocumented students newly eligible for California’s state aid program,… more →
The Effect of Active Learning Professional Development Training on College Students’ Academic Outcomes
Growing literature documents the promise of active learning instruction in engaging students in college classrooms. Accordingly, faculty professional development (PD) programs on active learning have become increasingly popular in postsecondary institutions; yet, quantitative evidence on the… more →
When expectation isn’t reality: Racial disparities in overestimation and STEM attrition among first-year students in college
Existing research indicates that racially minoritized students with similar academic preparation are less likely than their represented peers to persist in STEM, raising the question of factors that may contribute to racial disparities in STEM participation beyond academic preparation. We extend… more →
The Rise of (E)quality Politics: The Political Development of Higher Education Policy, 1969-1999
Public discussions of racial inclusion and equal opportunity initiatives in the U.S. are often met with claims that expanding access to an institution, space, or public good is likely to diminish its quality. Examples of this pattern include: anticipated (and real) property value declines when… more →
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due: Causal Impacts of Reverse Transfer Associate Degrees on Education and Labor Market Outcomes
Reverse transfer associate degrees are credentials retroactively awarded to current bachelor’s degree seekers that combine current four-year credits with credits previously earned at a community college. Providing students with an associate degree may not only increase motivation and persistence… more →
Gauging Engagement: Measuring Student Response to a Large-Scale College Advising Field Experiment
Interactive, text message-based advising programs have become an increasingly common strategy to support college access and success for underrepresented student populations. Despite the proliferation of these programs, we know relatively little about how students engage in these text-based… more →
The Power of “Free” College: Reducing Racial and Socioeconomic Inequalities in College Expectations
Promoting equality in college enrollment and completion must start early in students’ college-going journeys, including with their expectations to first earn a college degree. With a nationally representative sample of high school students, I evaluate the ability of a recent collection of… more →
Let’s Chat: Leveraging Chatbot Outreach for Improved Course Performance
This study reports on the causal effects of using a non-generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot to provide course-specific, proactive outreach and support to students in large-enrollment undergraduate courses. Across both an American Government and Microeconomics course, students… more →
Returns to Different Postsecondary Investments: Institution Type, Academic Programs, and Credentials
Early research on the returns to higher education treated the postsecondary system as a monolith. In reality, postsecondary education in the United States and around the world is highly differentiated, with a variety of options that differ by credential (associates degree, bachelor’s… more →
Institutional heterogeneity in the education and earnings returns to postsecondary technical education: Evidence from Missouri
We estimate the education and earnings returns to enrolling in technical two-year degree programs at community colleges in Missouri. A unique feature of the Missouri context is the presence of a highly regarded, nationally ranked technical college: State Technical College of Missouri (State Tech… more →
The Impact of COVID-19 on Community College Enrollment and Student Success: Evidence from California Administrative Data
Although enrollment at California’s four-year public universities mostly remained unchanged by the pandemic, the effects were substantial for students at California Community Colleges, the largest higher education system in the country. This paper provides a detailed analysis of how the pandemic… more →
Subtraction by Addition: Do Private Scholarship Awards Lead to Financial Aid Displacement?
Award displacement occurs when one type of financial aid award directly contributes to the change in the quantity of another award. We explore whether postsecondary institutions displaced awards in response to the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship by capitalizing on the doubling of the maximum… more →
The Impact of Natural Disasters on Human Capital
We show that natural disasters affect a region’s aggregate human capital through at least four channels. In addition to causing out-migration, natural disasters reduce student achievement, lower high school graduation rates, and decrease post-secondary attendance. We estimate that disasters that… more →
Job Training Programs as Crime Deterrents? Evidence from a Low-Income Targeted Training Program RCT
The primary goal of job training programs is to improve employment and earning outcomes of participants. However, effective job training programs may have potential secondary benefits, including in the form of reduced arrests. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of a job training program in… more →
Can Information and Advising Affect Postsecondary Participation and Attainment for Non-Traditional Students? Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment with the U.S. Army
Non-traditional students disproportionately enroll in institutions with weaker graduation and earnings outcomes. One hypothesis is that these students would have made different choices had they been provided with better information or supports during the decision-making process. We conducted a… more →
The Long-Run Educational Benefits of High-Achieving Classrooms
Despite the prevalence of school tracking, evidence on whether it improves student success is mixed. This paper studies how tracking within high school impacts high-achieving students’ short- and longer-term academic outcomes. Our setting is a large and selective Chinese high school, where first… more →
The Effects of Growth Mindset on College Persistence and Completion
We study the long-term effects of a psychological intervention on longitudinal academic outcomes and degree completion of college students. All freshmen at a large public university were randomized to an online growth mindset, belonging, or control group. We tracked students’ academic outcomes… more →
Social Spending and Educational Gaps in Infant Health in the United States, 1998-2017
Recent expansions of child tax, food assistance and health insurance programs have made American families’ need for a robust social safety net highly evident, while researchers and policymakers continue to debate the best way to support families via the welfare state. How much do children – and… more →