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Author: Shoumi Mustafa
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Category : Student aid
Languages : en
Pages :
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Abstract: The Effects of Financial Aid on College Completion I examine effects of grant aid and education loan amounts on the college completion decision of students attending four-year colleges. The goal is to determine whether a given amount of financial aid reduces the dropout probability, and whether it has differential effects when given as grants versus loans. Using data from the Second Follow-up Survey of the 1994 Beginning Post-secondary Students Longitudinal Study, I estimate a probit model of the college dropout decision, accounting for the endogeneity of grant and loan amounts. My estimates show that grants reduce the dropout probability although loans do not affect individuals' college completion decisions. The result suggests that current federal government policies of promoting loans as the main form of financial aid (in higher education) are not consistent with the stated objective of increasing access to college. Education loans are found to influence college quality choices of meritorious students from low to middle income families. The Effects of State Characteristic College Enrollment I examine how state policies on tuition, grant aid and appropriations influence high school graduates' two-year versus four-year college attendance decisions. Using data from 1994-99 October Supplements of the Current Population Survey, I estimate a multinomial logit model of college choice. My estimates show that higher four-year college tuition motivates prospective students to attend two-year colleges. I also find positive effects of two-year college appropriations on two-year college attendance. These results illustrate the on-going interaction of state policies and individual decisions. In recent years, increased earnings of college educated individuals have resulted in large increases in college enrollments. States have adjusted to the enrollment pressure by raising four-year college tuition. In response, students have switched to two-year colleges, requiring states to allocate larger amounts to such colleges. Reconciling Estimates of Labor Market Returns to College Quality Rapid increases in the cost of attending higher quality colleges have contributed to a growing literature on the relationship between college quality and student earnings. In a group of nine such studies, analysts find positive earnings effects of college quality but fail to agree on its magnitude. Because these studies differ with respect to a variety of methodological and data related issues, it is not possible to ascertain how each of these differences influences the estimates. I consider a large set of factor that distinguish the studies and examine the sensitivity of the estimates to each of the factors, using two large micro data sets, the First Follow-up Survey of the Baccalaureate and Beyond Study and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. My estimates show that college quality effects differ between blacks and whites, college graduates and dropouts and also between young and older students. I also find that correcting for the endogeneity of college quality variables increases estimates of college quality effects, implying that costs of attendance constrain individuals' college quality choices.
Author: Shoumi Mustafa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Student aid
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Abstract: The Effects of Financial Aid on College Completion I examine effects of grant aid and education loan amounts on the college completion decision of students attending four-year colleges. The goal is to determine whether a given amount of financial aid reduces the dropout probability, and whether it has differential effects when given as grants versus loans. Using data from the Second Follow-up Survey of the 1994 Beginning Post-secondary Students Longitudinal Study, I estimate a probit model of the college dropout decision, accounting for the endogeneity of grant and loan amounts. My estimates show that grants reduce the dropout probability although loans do not affect individuals' college completion decisions. The result suggests that current federal government policies of promoting loans as the main form of financial aid (in higher education) are not consistent with the stated objective of increasing access to college. Education loans are found to influence college quality choices of meritorious students from low to middle income families. The Effects of State Characteristic College Enrollment I examine how state policies on tuition, grant aid and appropriations influence high school graduates' two-year versus four-year college attendance decisions. Using data from 1994-99 October Supplements of the Current Population Survey, I estimate a multinomial logit model of college choice. My estimates show that higher four-year college tuition motivates prospective students to attend two-year colleges. I also find positive effects of two-year college appropriations on two-year college attendance. These results illustrate the on-going interaction of state policies and individual decisions. In recent years, increased earnings of college educated individuals have resulted in large increases in college enrollments. States have adjusted to the enrollment pressure by raising four-year college tuition. In response, students have switched to two-year colleges, requiring states to allocate larger amounts to such colleges. Reconciling Estimates of Labor Market Returns to College Quality Rapid increases in the cost of attending higher quality colleges have contributed to a growing literature on the relationship between college quality and student earnings. In a group of nine such studies, analysts find positive earnings effects of college quality but fail to agree on its magnitude. Because these studies differ with respect to a variety of methodological and data related issues, it is not possible to ascertain how each of these differences influences the estimates. I consider a large set of factor that distinguish the studies and examine the sensitivity of the estimates to each of the factors, using two large micro data sets, the First Follow-up Survey of the Baccalaureate and Beyond Study and the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. My estimates show that college quality effects differ between blacks and whites, college graduates and dropouts and also between young and older students. I also find that correcting for the endogeneity of college quality variables increases estimates of college quality effects, implying that costs of attendance constrain individuals' college quality choices.
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 158
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This dissertation consists of three essays on adolescents' post secondary education choices and labor market returns. In the first chapter, I estimate the causal effect of college selectivity on wages including graduate degree attainment. I control for both observed and unobserved selection by extending the model of Carneiro, Hansen, and Heckman (2003). The results show that graduating from a college of one standard deviation higher selectivity leads to a 3.7% higher hourly wage ten years after college graduation regardless of graduate degree attainment. In addition, a one standard deviation increase in college quality increases the expected returns to graduate degree attainment by 0.8% (4.3% increase in the probability of graduate degree attainment multiplied by 18.6% returns to a graduate degree). The second chapter further examines the role of household income in children's postsecondary institution application and enrollment decisions including college quality, using the high school classes of the early 2000s. I find that the family income is monotonically and positively correlated at the extensive margin of higher education (whether or not to apply and enroll in college) even when we control for children's cognitive ability. On the other hand, I find a U-shaped correlation at the intensive margin especially for four-year college students in terms of average applied, or enrolled, college quality after controlling for children's cognitive ability. These findings highlight different roles of the family income in college application and enrollment stages between extensive and intensive margins. The third chapter examines the undocumented value of two-year colleges, namely, the option value incorporating the uncertainty in degree completion using the high school classes of early 2000s. The empirical results show that expected wages of enrolling at four-year colleges are strictly higher for all types of students than those of enrolling at two-year colleges. This is mainly because of the low associate's degree completion probability. In order for two-year colleges to serve as a provider of wider options for individuals who have not yet decided whether to pursue a bachelor's degree, it is crucial to improve a degree completion rate in these institutions.
Author: Rodney P. Hughes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 155
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Author: Riley Acton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 218
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Chapter 1: Effects of Reduced Community College Tuition on College Choices and Degree CompletionRecent efforts to increase college access concentrate on reducing tuition rates at community colleges, but researchers and policymakers alike have expressed concern that such reductions may not lead to long-run college completion gains. In this chapter, I use detailed data on students' college enrollment and completion outcomes to study how community college tuition rates affect students' outcomes across both public and private colleges. By exploiting spatial variation in tuition rates, I find that reducing tuition at a student's local community college by $1,000 increases enrollment at the college by 3.5 percentage points (18%) and reduces enrollment at non-local community colleges, for-profit institutions, and other private, vocationally-focused colleges, by 1.9 percentage points (15%). This shift in enrollment choices increases students' persistence in college, the number of credits they complete, and the probability that they transfer to and earn bachelor's degrees from four-year colleges.Chapter 2: Community College Program Choices in the Wake of Local Job LossesDeciding which field to study is one of the most consequential decisions college students make, but most research on the topic focuses on students attending four-year colleges. In this chapter, I study the extent to which community college students' program choices respond to changes in local labor market conditions in related occupations. To do so, I exploit the prevalence of mass layoffs and plant closings across counties, industries, and time, and create occupation-specific layoff measures that align closely with community college programs. I find that declines in local employment deter students from entering closely related community college programs and instead induce them to enroll in other vocationally-oriented programs. Using data on occupational skill composition, I document that students predominantly shift enrollment between programs that require similar skills. These effects are strongest when layoffs occur in business, health, and law enforcement occupations, as well as when they take place in rural counties.Chapter 3: Do Health Insurance Mandates Spillover to Education? Evidence from Michigan's Autism Insurance Mandate (with Scott Imberman and Michael Lovenheim)Social programs and mandates are usually studied in isolation, but interaction effects could create spillovers to other public goods. In this paper, we examine how health insurance coverage affects the education of students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the context of state-mandated private therapy coverage. Since Medicaid benefits under the mandate were far weaker than under private insurance, we proxy for Medicaid ineligibility and estimate effects via triple-differences. We find little evidence of an overall shift in ASD identification, but we do find substantial crowd-out of special education services for students with ASD from the mandate. The mandate led to increased mainstreaming of students in general education classrooms and a reduction in special education support services like teacher consultants. There is little evidence of changes in achievement, which supports our interpretation of the service reductions as crowd-out.
Author: Yuen Ting Liu
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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My paper is the first to employ a difference-in-difference approach to examine the completion and labor market outcomes resulting from the YRP using a state administrative dataset from a community college system. I find that for each $1,000 of additional YRP grant funding, summer enrollment increases by 28 percentage points and associate degree completion rate increases by 2.4 percentage points, with these gains primarily benefitting adult students who enrolled at age 20 or above. Given that the federal government is considering reinstating the YRP, my research is timely in providing insight into the efficacy of the YRP.
Author:
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ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 734
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Author:
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ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Author: Lois Miller (Ph.D.)
Publisher:
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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This dissertation includes three essays on the economics of higher education. In the first chapter, I study the effects of college transfer. Over one-third of college students in the United States transfer between institutions, yet little is known about how transferring affect students' educational and labor market outcomes. Using administrative data from Texas and a regression discontinuity design, I study the effects of a student's transferring to a four-year college from either a two-year or four-year college. To do so, I use applications and admissions data to uncover the unpublished GPA cutoffs that each institution uses in its transfer student admissions and then use these cutoffs as an instrument for transfer. In contrast to past work focused on first-time-in-college students, I find negative earnings returns for academically marginal students who transfer from two-year colleges to four-year colleges or from less-resourced four-year colleges to flagship colleges. The mechanisms include transfer students' substituting out of high-paying majors into lower-paying majors, reduced employment and labor market experience, and potential loss of support networks. In the second chapter, joint with Minseon Park, I study how colleges' ``sticker price'' and institutional financial aid change during and after tuition caps and freezes using a modified event study design. While tuition regulations lower sticker prices, colleges recoup losses by lowering financial aid or rapidly increasing tuition after regulations end. At four-year colleges, regulations lower sticker price by 6.3 percentage points while simultaneously reducing aid by nearly twice as much (11.3 percentage points). At two-year colleges, while regulations lower tuition by 9.3 percentage points, the effect disappears within three years of the end of the regulation. Changes in net tuition vary widely; focusing on four-year colleges, while some students receive discounts up to 5.9 percentage points, others pay 3.8 percentage points more than they would have without these regulations. Students who receive financial aid, enter college right after the regulation is lifted, or attend colleges that are more dependent on tuition benefit less. In the third chapter, joint with Garrett Anstreicher, I study how the scarring effects of graduating from college into a recession vary with college quality. 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 college quality in the context of the Great Recession. We find that earnings losses are concentrated among graduates from relatively high-quality colleges. Key mechanisms include substitution out of the labor force and into graduate school, decreased graduate degree completion, and differences in the economic stability of fields of study between graduates of high- and low-quality colleges.
Author: Noah Hirschl
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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This dissertation consists of three studies that shed light on the ongoing transformation of higher education's role in producing inequality and transmitting advantages across generations in the United States. The first chapter examines the most educated Americans: graduate and professional degree holders. The subsequent two chapters, by contrast, shift focus to young adults' transition into higher education, examining how schools and local labor markets shape racial inequality in the transition from high school to college.The first empirical chapter examines horizontal stratification among graduate and professional degree programs and their connection to the new economic elite. Compared to the baccalaureate level, there has been relatively little empirical research on distinctions among graduate and professional degrees and how they relate to labor market inequality. I add to this emerging literature with 30 years of linked survey data containing an unprecedented level of detail on the lives of the most educated Americans. I track recent historical changes in who attains top-ranked MBAs, JDs, MDs, and PhDs, finding a marked increase in the influence of parental education on elite degree attainment. This novel evidence suggests the solidifying of an intergenerational class of highly educated professionals in the United States. Second, I explore the earnings returns to program rank across different degree types, and by gender and parental education, with a particular focus on the top percentile of the earnings distribution. Unlike at the baccalaureate level, the earnings returns to prestige vary significantly across fields, such that they are much higher in MBA and JD programs than research doctorate or medical programs. I also find that the earnings returns to prestige are higher for children from less-educated families, suggesting a potential equalizing effect of elite postbaccalaureate programs. The second empirical chapter examines how local labor markets shape college attendance behavior differently by race and gender. A long-standing sociological literature has established that white students are substantially less likely to attend four-year colleges than are Black students with similar socioeconomic resources and academic performance. Drawing on accounts of racial labor market segregation among workers without bachelor's degrees, I hypothesize that racialized and gendered access to good sub-baccalaureate jobs-for instance, jobs in the trades-may account for racial differences in college attendance. I test this hypothesis empirically using administrative data on students attending high school in Wisconsin, examining net racial differences in college attendance across labor markets with varying degrees of racial occupational segregation. I do not find clear support for my hypothesis. However, I do find that white boys are more likely than Black boys to attend two-year colleges in places with more racially segregated labor markets. This finding suggests that a net-White advantage in vocational education pathways parallels the net-Black advantage in four-year college attendance, and provides some support for the hypothesized labor market mechanism. The third empirical chapter, co-authored with Christian Michael Smith, examines how high school course enrollment policies and school officials' decision-making affect racial inequality in high school tracking on the path to college. Prior work in sociology has produced conflicting evidence on whether and to what extent school officials' decision-making contributes to these patterns. We advance this literature by examining the effects of schools' enrollment policies for Advanced Placement (AP) courses. Using a unique combination of school survey data and administrative data from Wisconsin, we examine what happens to racial inequality in AP participation when school officials enforce performance-based selection criteria, which we call "course gatekeeping." We find that course gatekeeping has racially disproportionate effects. Although racialized differences in prior achievement partially explain the especially large negative effects among students of color, course gatekeeping produces Black-white and Hispanic-white disparities in participation even among students with similar, relatively low prior achievement. We further find that course gatekeeping has longer-run effects, particularly discouraging Black and Asian or Pacific Islander students from attending highly selective four-year colleges.
Author: Patrick Andrew Lapid
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 119
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This thesis examines two uncommon topics in the economic literature regarding college access and completion: the role of college proximity in recent high school graduates' enrollment decisions, and how structural changes to the student experience at a postsecondary institution can affect college completion. The first chapter is a review of the current economic literature on college access and completion. I start by reviewing what we know about the factors and policies that influence college access, focusing on the literature on family resources, financial aid, and behavioral interventions. I follow this with a detailed discussion on the relationship of college proximity on both enroll- ment and educational attainment, first explaining how a nearby college can both lower potential students' cost constraints of attendance in the local community and influence these students' goals and expectations. I also review the empirical evidence, both the use of college proximity as a instrumental variable in estimating the returns to education and the direct effects of nearby colleges on application and enrollment behavior. I then transition toward college completion with reviewing what we know about college supply and how access and completion vary across institutional types. I close this review by looking at how financial aid programs can affect college completion as well as access, the effectiveness of various behavioral interventions on course grades and later performance in college, and institutional-level experiments and reforms to improve completion rates. The second chapter concerns the role of distance in college access, by focusing on the opening of four new public universities in California from 1995 to 2005. I exploit these openings to test whether distance is a binding constraint on four-year college enrollment among new high school graduates. I show that distance is highly influential: Although California has dozens of public four-year colleges, 40 percent of enrollment from new graduates is at schools within 25 miles of home. Using event study and difference-in-difference models, I find that the opening of a new university nearby raises the four-year enrollment rate among recent high school graduates from local high schools by 1.6 percentage point (an 8 percent increase), with no effect on the share of local graduates who attend farther-away campuses. The extensive margin effect and lack of displacement show up across a range of subgroups, including under-represented minority students. My findings support the view that cost-of-living constraints are binding for many prospective college students. The third chapter concerns the evaluation of college programs for causal impacts on graduation and other student outcomes, focusing on UC Berkeley Extension's Fall Program for Freshmen (FPF), a first-year learning community for Spring-admit students to UC Berkeley. Participants choose from a subset of introductory courses and receive advising at facilities near UC Berkeley, while living and participating in activities with other Berkeley students. FPF participants then matriculate to the main campus in the Spring semester. I assess the treatment effect of FPF on college outcomes, using regression and propensity score methods to control for students' backgrounds at admission and adjusting for differences between FPF participants and regular Fall enrollees at Berkeley. FPF participants are similar to Fall students in their admission characteristics and predicted graduation rates. I find that FPF participants are more likely to graduate and graduate on time from UC Berkeley compared to regular Fall admits in the College of Letters and Science, but do not have major differences in their college grade-point averages (GPAs) at graduation. Students with weaker academic backgrounds have larger program impacts. These findings are robust across a variety of model specifications.
