Bookish
Eric Eide, Michael Hilmer & Mark Showalter
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
All college students must decide where to attend college and what major to study. We estimate how earnings by college major differ at different college selectivity types. We find major-specific earnings vary markedly by college selectivity, with the strongest differences among business majors and the weakest differences among science majors. We also find that when comparing earnings of graduates from top colleges to middle or bottom ranked colleges, the distribution of students across majors can be as important as earnings differences by major in accounting for college selectivity earnings gaps.
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The Effect of Access to College Assessments on Enrollment and Attainment
Georeg Bulman
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines if students' college outcomes are sensitive to access to college admissions tests. I construct a data set of every test center location and district policy in the United States linked to the universe of individual testing records and a large sample of college enrollment records. I find evidence that SAT taking is responsive to the opening or closing of a testing center at a student's own or a neighboring high school and to policies that provide free in-school administration and default registration. Newly induced takers of high academic aptitude appear likely to attend and graduate from college.
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Teacher Quality and Student Inequality
Richard Mansfield
Journal of Labor Economics, July 2015, Pages 751-788
Abstract:
This paper uses 11 years of administrative data from North Carolina public high schools to examine the extent to which the allocation of teachers within and across public high schools is contributing to inequality in student test score performance. The existence of nearly 3,500 teacher transfers allows separate identification of each teacher's quality from other school-level factors. I find that teaching quality is fairly equitably distributed both within and across high schools: students among the bottom (top) decile of a student background index are taught by teachers who are, on average, at the 41st (57th) percentile of the value-added distribution.
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Dan Goldhaber, Lesley Lavery & Roddy Theobald
Educational Researcher, June/July 2015, Pages 293-307
Abstract:
Policymakers aiming to close the well-documented achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students have increasingly turned their attention to issues of teacher quality. A number of studies have demonstrated that teachers are inequitably distributed across student subgroups by input measures, like experience and qualifications, as well as output measures, like value-added estimates of teacher performance, but these tend to focus on either individual measures of teacher quality or particular school districts. In this study, we present a comprehensive, descriptive analysis of the inequitable distribution of both input and output measures of teacher quality across various indicators of student disadvantage across all school districts in Washington State. We demonstrate that in elementary school, middle school, and high school classrooms, virtually every measure of teacher quality we examine - experience, licensure exam scores, and value added - is inequitably distributed across every indicator of student disadvantage - free/reduced-price lunch status, underrepresented minority, and low prior academic performance. Finally, we decompose these inequities to the district, school, and classroom levels and find that patterns in teacher sorting at all three levels contribute to the overall teacher quality gaps.
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David Lucca, Taylor Nadauld & Karen Shen
Federal Reserve Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
When students fund their education through loans, changes in student borrowing and tuition are interlinked. Higher tuition costs raise loan demand, but loan supply also affects equilibrium tuition costs - for example, by relaxing students' funding constraints. To resolve this simultaneity problem, we exploit detailed student-level financial data and changes in federal student aid programs to identify the impact of increased student loan funding on tuition. We find that institutions more exposed to changes in the subsidized federal loan program increased their tuition disproportionately around these policy changes, with a sizable pass-through effect on tuition of about 65 percent. We also find that Pell Grant aid and the unsubsidized federal loan program have pass-through effects on tuition, although these are economically and statistically not as strong. The subsidized loan effect on tuition is most pronounced for expensive, private institutions that are somewhat, but not among the most, selective.
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Public School Choice and Racial Sorting: An Examination of Charter Schools in Indianapolis
Marc Stein
American Journal of Education, August 2015, Pages 597-627
Abstract:
There has been a long-standing concern among education researchers and policy makers that public school choice may lead to increased racial isolation. Improving on aggregate comparisons, I examine the sorting of students into charter schools by tracking individual students from their charter school of enrollment back to the school they were enrolled in immediately prior to the switch to a charter school, allowing for a direct comparison of school racial demographics between the two sectors. I find evidence that the process of charter school choice in Indianapolis leads to higher degrees of racial isolation and less diversity within schools than is present in the underlying process of student school transfers in the public school district from which a majority of these students came.
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Revisiting Gladwell's Hockey Players: Influence of Relative Age Effects upon Earning the PhD
Kevin Kniffin & Andrew Hanks
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the influence of relative age effects (RAE) upon specific factors related to earning a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD): age at degree, time to degree, and salary upon completion. Drawing on the 2010 Survey of Earned Doctorates, we find no significant influence of RAE. Specifically, when controlling for discipline-specific variation, we find no influence of RAE on the age of people earning the PhD and no influence on post-graduate salary. However, we estimate a relative salary loss due to redshirting of over $138,000 in lifetime earnings for individuals who earn the PhD. To the extent that earning the PhD is considered an outstanding achievement, our findings support the view that redshirting is unnecessary and costly.
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Weak Markets, Strong Teachers: Recession at Career Start and Teacher Effectiveness
Markus Nagler, Marc Piopiunik & Martin West
NBER Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
How do alternative job opportunities affect teacher quality? We provide the first causal evidence on this question by exploiting business cycle conditions at career start as a source of exogenous variation in the outside options of potential teachers. Unlike prior research, we directly assess teacher quality with value-added measures of impacts on student test scores, using administrative data on 33,000 teachers in Florida public schools. Consistent with a Roy model of occupational choice, teachers entering the profession during recessions are significantly more effective in raising student test scores. Results are supported by placebo tests and not driven by differential attrition.
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Education and Lifetime Earnings in the United States
Christopher Tamborini, ChangHwan Kim & Arthur Sakamoto
Demography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Differences in lifetime earnings by educational attainment have been of great research and policy interest. Although a large literature examines earnings differences by educational attainment, research on lifetime earnings - which refers to total accumulated earnings from entry into the labor market until retirement - remains limited because of the paucity of adequate data. Using data that match respondents in the Survey of Income and Program Participation to their longitudinal tax earnings as recorded by the Social Security Administration, we estimate the 50-year work career effects of education on lifetime earnings for men and women. By overcoming the purely synthetic cohort approach, our results provide a more realistic appraisal of actual patterns of lifetime earnings. Detailed estimates are provided for gross lifetime earnings by education; net lifetime earnings after controlling for covariates associated with the probability of obtaining a bachelor's degree; and the net present 50-year lifetime value of education at age 20. In addition, we provide estimates that include individuals with zero earnings and disability. We also assess the adequacy of the purely synthetic cohort approach, which uses age differences in earnings observed in cross-sectional surveys to approximate lifetime earnings. Overall, our results confirm the persistent positive effects of higher education on earnings over different stages of the work career and over a lifetime, but also reveal notably smaller net effects on lifetime earnings compared with previously reported estimates. We discuss the implications of these and other findings.
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Academic Attitudes and Achievement in Students of Urban Public Single-Sex and Mixed-Sex High Schools
Nicole Else-Quest & Oana Peterca
American Educational Research Journal, August 2015, Pages 693-718
Abstract:
Publicly funded single-sex schooling (SSS) has proliferated in recent years and is touted as a remedy to gaps in academic attitudes and achievement, particularly for low-income students of color. Research on SSS is rife with limitations, stemming from selective admissions processes, selection effects related to socioeconomic status, a lack of ethnic diversity among students, and a neglect of boys' schools. Addressing those concerns, the current study is a quasi-experimental investigation of the academic attitudes and achievement among 11th-grade low-income students of color enrolled in nonselective, urban neighborhood public single-sex and mixed-sex high schools. Students in SSS reported significantly more negative attitudes about English/reading compared to students in mixed-sex schools (MSS), while there were no differences in math or science attitudes. Data from standardized tests indicate that SSS was associated with poorer achievement among boys in reading and math but higher achievement among girls on math, science, reading, and writing.
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Early Math Coursework and College Readiness: Evidence from Targeted Middle School Math Acceleration
Shaun Dougherty et al.
NBER Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
To better prepare students for college-level math and the demands of the labor market, school systems have tried to increase the rigor of students' math coursework. The failure of universal "Algebra for All" models has led recently to more targeted approaches. We study one such approach in Wake County, North Carolina, which began using prior test scores to assign middle school students to an accelerated math track culminating in eighth grade algebra. The policy has reduced the role that income and race played in course assignment. A regression discontinuity design exploiting the eligibility threshold shows that acceleration has no clear effect on test scores but lowers middle school course grades. Acceleration does, however, raise the probability of taking and passing geometry in ninth grade by over 30 percentage points, including for black and Hispanic students. Nonetheless, most students accelerated in middle school do not remain so by high school and those that do earn low grades in advanced courses. This leaky pipeline suggests that targeted math acceleration has potential to increase college readiness among disadvantaged populations but that acceleration alone is insufficient to keep most students on such a track.
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Socioeconomic inequality in access to high-status colleges: A cross-country comparison
John Jerrim, Anna Chmielewski & Phil Parker
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, December 2015, Pages 20-32
Abstract:
This paper considers the relationship between family background, academic achievement in high school and access to high-status postsecondary institutions in three developed countries (Australia, England and the United States). We begin by estimating the unconditional association between family background and access to a high status university, before examining how this relationship changes once academic achievement in high school is controlled. Our results suggest that high achieving disadvantaged children are much less likely to enter a high-status college than their more advantaged peers, and that the magnitude of this socio-economic gradient is broadly similar across these three countries. However, we also find that socio-economic inequality in access to high-status private US colleges is much more pronounced than access to their public sector counterparts (both within the US and when compared overseas).
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Hierarchy as a theme in the US college, 1880-1920
Ethan Ris
History of Education, forthcoming
Abstract:
How did the undergraduate college rapidly position itself as the gateway to middle-class US employment between 1880 and 1920? This article attempts to explain one part of that process. Drawing on Weberian organisational theory, transnational intellectual history and case studies of three institutions, it identifies hierarchy as a defining aspect of both modern society and the modern workplace - one that must be comprehended and mastered by the successful 'white collar' worker. The author describes the turn-of-the-century transformation of the US college in the context of its increasingly hierarchical nature, as opposed to traditional explanations that focus on human capital production or the incorporation of the German research university model. Hierarchical structures in the hidden and extra-curriculum of the US college helped establish it as the pre-eminent testing ground for aspiring bureaucratic workers.
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Why Are University Endowments Large and Risky?
Thomas Gilbert & Christopher Hrdlicka
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
We build a model of universities combining their real production decisions with their choice of endowment size and asset allocation. Variation in opportunity cost, that is, the productivity of internal projects, has a first-order effect on these choices. Adding the UPMIFA-mandated 7% payout constraint, the endowment size and asset allocations match those empirically observed. This constraint has little effect on universities that do not value the output of their internal projects but harms those that do: it prevents the endowment's use as an effective buffer stock, thereby increasing the volatility of production, and it slows the growth of the most productive universities.
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Judith Scott-Clayton & Veronica Minaya
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Student employment subsidies are one of the largest types of federal employment subsidies, yet little is known about their impact. We provide a framework highlighting the likelihood of heterogeneity in program effects, depending upon whether recipients are marginal or inframarginal workers. We then utilize a matching approach to estimate the effects of the Federal Work-Study program, leveraging the fact that FWS funding varies across institutions for idiosyncratic reasons. Our results suggest that about half of FWS participants would have worked even in the absence of the subsidy; for these students, FWS reduces hours worked and improves academic outcomes, but has little impact on early post-college employment. For students who would not have worked otherwise, the pattern of effects reverses. Overall, the positive effects are strongest for subgroups who are the least likely to have access to the program, suggesting there may be gains to improved targeting of funds.
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Vincent La
Economics Letters, September 2015, Pages 102-106
Abstract:
Using Boston Public School District's unique walk zone feature to better account for unobservables, I estimate a significant positive effect of school quality on house sale prices. This effect increases for homes more likely to be bought by families with children and diminishes in areas with already oversubscribed schools.