Knowing is half the battle
Monopsony Power in Higher Education: A Tale of Two Tracks
Austan Goolsbee & Chad Syverson
NBER Working Paper, July 2019
Abstract:
This paper tests for and measures monopsony power in the U.S. higher education labor market. It does so by directly estimating the residual labor supply curves facing individual four-year colleges and universities using school-specific labor demand instruments. The results indicate that schools have significant monopsony power over their tenure track faculty. Its magnitude is monotonic in rank, being greatest over full professors and smaller for associate and assistant professors. For non-tenure track faculty, however, universities do not seem to have any monopsony power and instead face perfectly elastic residual labor supply curves. Universities’ market power over tenure track faculty does not differ between public and private schools nor between female and male faculty. Monopsony power is greater for larger universities, and the geographic market for faculty seems to be national rather than local. Monopsony power is also larger at higher-status institutions as measured by Carnegie classifications, average test scores of the undergraduate student body, or initial salary rankings. The results also suggest that monopsony power has contributed to the trend toward non-tenure track faculty in U.S.
The Labor of Division: Returns to Compulsory High School Math Coursework
Joshua Goodman
Journal of Labor Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite great focus on and public investment in STEM education, little causal evidence connects quantitative coursework to students’ economic outcomes. I show that state changes in minimum high school math requirements substantially increase black students’ completed math coursework and their later earnings. The marginal student’s return to an additional math course is 10%, roughly half the return to a year of high school, and is partly explained by a shift toward more cognitively skilled occupations. White students’ coursework and earnings are unaffected. Rigorous standards for quantitative coursework can close meaningful portions of racial gaps in economic outcomes.
Who benefits from selective education? Evidence from elite boarding school admissions
Ying Shi
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Existing research finds minimal gains from attending elite US secondary schools. This paper estimates the causal effect of attending a selective public boarding school, an institutional model increasingly used by states to serve academically gifted students. Regression discontinuity estimates using multiple admissions thresholds show math score gains and college application and enrollment patterns that shift away from less competitive colleges. Effects are concentrated among minorities, students with lower prior individual achievement, from rural neighborhoods, or lower-achieving sending schools. The opportunity to attend selective boarding schools reduces the tendency of disadvantaged or under-represented students to attend a less selective college by at least one-quarter.
The Effects of Regulations on Private School Choice Program Participation: Experimental Evidence from Florida
Corey DeAngelis, Lindsey Burke & Patrick Wolf
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Methods: We use surveys to randomly assign different regulations to 2,958 private school leaders in Florida and ask them whether they would participate in a new private school choice program during the following school year.
Results: We received responses from 327 private school leaders. Relative to no additional regulations, our most conservative models find that open‐enrollment mandates reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by 17 percentage points or 70 percent. State standardized testing requirements reduce the likelihood that private schools are certain to participate by 12 percentage points or 46 percent. We find no evidence to suggest that the prohibition of copayment affects participation overall. We find limited evidence to suggest that regulations are more likely to deter higher‐quality schools.as measured by tuition levels and enrollment trends.
Comic-Con: Can Comics of the Constitution Enable Meaningful Learning in Political Science?
Katharine Owens et al.
PS: Political Science & Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article explores the value and application of using comic images to teach difficult political texts. We presented either visual or textual portions of the Constitution to 71 American 18- to 22-year-olds using Survey Monkey Audience, measuring and comparing their knowledge of the Constitution before and after viewing. Respondents viewing the comic of congressional duties experienced statistically significant gains in pretest to posttest mean knowledge scores. Respondents viewing the text also experienced an increase in mean scores pretest to posttest; however, these changes were smaller and not statistically significant. This indicates that students may better comprehend content from visual depictions of difficult texts. We conclude by providing an example of one way that we use comics of political texts as a tool for student learning in an international civics exchange program.
Your Peers’ Parents: Spillovers from Parental Education
Jane Cooley Fruehwirth & Jessica Gagete Miranda
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Better-educated parents bestow significant advantages on their children in life; we explore whether this advantage multiplies, spilling over to classmates. Using a nationally-representative sample of US kindergarteners, we find significant effects of the parental education of classmates on math and reading, but not on socio-emotional skills. The effects are economically meaningful: reassigning classrooms so that all students have the same parental education composition would narrow the achievement gap between children of parents who are high-school-educated (or less) and those who are university-educated by 9 to 13 percent. These spillovers are not explained by rich, beginning of the school-year, measures of cognitive and socio-emotional skills, nor by race or socioeconomic status. Interestingly, not all spillovers from parental education are positive. In reading, we find that university-educated parents who are not working full-time create some negative spillovers for the classroom, which appear to come from their children’s relatively advanced reading skills.
Semesters or Quarters? The Effect of the Academic Calendar on Postsecondary Student Outcomes
Valerie Bostwick, Stefanie Fischer & Matthew Lang
Ohio State University Working Paper, June 2019
Abstract:
We examine the impact of US colleges and universities switching from an academic quarter calendar to a semester calendar on student outcomes. Using panel data on the near universe of four-year nonprofit institutions and leveraging quasi-experimental variation in calendars across institutions and years, we show that switching from quarters to semesters negatively impacts on-time graduation rates. Event study analyses show that these negative effects persist well beyond the transition.Using detailed administrative transcript data from one large state system, we replicate this analysis at the student-level and investigate several possible mechanisms. We find shifting to a semester: (1) lowers first-year grades; (2) decreases the probability of enrolling in a full course load; and (3) delays the timing of major choice. By linking transcript data with the Unemployment Insurance system, we find minimal evidence that a semester calendar leads to increases in summer internship-type employment.
Students are Almost as Effective as Professors in University Teaching
Jan Feld, Nicolás Salamanca & Ulf Zölitz
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a previous paper, we have shown that academic rank is largely unrelated to tutorial teaching effectiveness. In this paper, we further explore the effectiveness of the lowest-ranked instructors: students. We confirm that students are almost as effective as senior instructors, and we produce results informative on the effects of expanding the use of student instructors. We conclude that hiring moderately more student instructors would not harm students, but exclusively using them will likely negatively affect student outcomes. Given how inexpensive student instructors are, however, such a policy might still be worth it.
Are All Head Start Classrooms Created Equal? Variation in Classroom Quality Within Head Start Centers and Implications for Accountability Systems
Terri Sabol, Emily Ross & Allison Frost
American Educational Research Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Most accountability policies monitor Head Start quality at the center level by selecting a subset of classrooms within a center to represent quality. This study explores variation in classroom quality in Head Start and implications for accountability systems and children’s well-being. We find that one third to one half of the variation in quality was due to differences between classrooms within center and that 37% of centers would receive different accountability decisions depending on which classrooms were selected. Average center-level quality was not related to children’s development. However, differences in within-center classroom instructional quality were related to children’s academic and social skills. Findings suggest that accountability systems miss important variation in classroom quality within centers, which may lead to inaccurate high-stakes decisions.
An Empirical Examination of the Bennett Hypothesis in Law School Prices
Robert Kelchen
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Whether colleges increase tuition in response to increased federal student loan limits (the Bennett Hypothesis) has been a topic of debate in the higher education community for decades, yet most studies have been based on small increases to Pell Grant or undergraduate student loan limits. In this paper, I leverage a large increase in graduate student lending limits that took place in 2006 followed by an expansion of federal income-driven repayment programs to examine whether law schools responded by raising tuition and whether student debt levels also increased. Using data from 2001 to 2015 across public and private law schools and both interrupted time series and difference-in-differences analytical techniques, I found rather modest relationships across both public and private nonprofit law schools. I conclude with some possible explanations for the lack of strong empirical support for the Bennett Hypothesis.
The Remarkable Unresponsiveness of College Students to Nudging And What We Can Learn from It
Philip Oreopoulos & Uros Petronijevic
NBER Working Paper, July 2019
Abstract:
We present results from a five-year effort to design promising online and text-message interventions to improve college achievement through several distinct channels. From a sample of nearly 25,000 students across three different campuses, we find some improvement from coaching-based interventions on mental health and study time, but none of the interventions we evaluate significantly influences academic outcomes (even for those students more at risk of dropping out). We interpret the results with our survey data and a model of student effort. Students study about five to eight hours fewer each week than they plan to, though our interventions do not alter this tendency. The coaching interventions make some students realize that more effort is needed to attain good grades but, rather than working harder, they settle by adjusting grade expectations downwards. Our study time impacts are not large enough for translating into significant academic benefits. More comprehensive but expensive programs appear more promising for helping college students outside the classroom.
Do Charter School Students Outperform Public School Students on Standardized Tests in Michigan?
Kevin Murphy & Oded Izraeli
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Methods: We have assembled a longitudinal data set spanning academic years 2002/2003–2011/2012 containing proficiency rates on standardized math and reading tests for Grades 4, 7, and 11. Our set of control variables includes demographic measures, free lunch eligibility, school characteristics, funding per student, and locational measures. We model unobserved heterogeneity using random effects estimation.
Results: We find that Michigan charter schools significantly underperform traditional public schools in both subjects and in all three grade levels early in the study period. These gaps narrow considerably, and in some cases disappear, by the end of the period.
Teachers’ use of questions during shared book reading: Relations to child responses
Richa Deshmukh et al.
Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Fall 2019, Pages 59-68
Abstract:
This study examined the extent to which preschool teachers used different types of questions during classroom-based shared book reading. Our goals were to describe the question wording teachers use to elicit child responses and to consider sequential relations between types of question wording and student responses. Participants included 96 preschool and kindergarten teachers who read aloud a standard narrative text to their whole class of students. All the sessions were video-recorded, transcribed and then coded by trained coders. During reading, teacher total extra-textual utterances included 23.74% questions (n = 5207 questions). The wording of these questions mostly included Wh-question forms (who, what, when, where) or question forms that required only a yes/no response. Yet sequential analyses demonstrated that less frequently occurring question forms, such as Why-questions and How-procedural questions elicited longer, multiword responses from students. Results further suggested that students readily answered most questions accurately; although, Why-questions produced more inaccurate student responses, this level of challenge is likely appropriate. Unfortunately, most teacher questions were easy for children to answer accurately or with a single word, thereby indicating teachers are not demonstrating Vygotskian principles (1978) of adjusting their questioning techniques to a level of challenge that is just above children’s overall level of mastery. Important implications of these findings are discussed for educators as well as curriculum developers.
Timing matters! Explaining between study phases enhances students’ learning
Andreas Lachner et al.
Journal of Educational Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has shown that explaining is an effective activity to enhance learning. In prior studies, students were instructed to explain the contents after completing an entire learning phase. Explaining at the end of a learning phase, however, may be less apt to support comprehension monitoring and subsequent regulation activities. In 2 experiments, we investigated whether explaining in earlier phases of studying (i.e., in-between explaining) would foster learning more than explaining after the entire study phase (i.e., afterstudy explaining). In Experiment 1, university students (N = 91) read a text about combustion engines and either explained the contents between the study phases or at the end of the entire study phase. A third group recalled the learning contents aloud at the end of the study phase to control for retrieval-processes that may also be involved in explaining. Results showed no overall effect of explaining in comparison to retrieval practice. However, in-between explaining enhanced students’ conceptual knowledge as compared with afterstudy explaining. Verbal protocol analyses showed that this effect was due to students’ increased monitoring. Experiment 2 (N = 126), had a 2 × 2-factorial design with between-subjects factors timing (in-between vs. afterstudy) and learning activity (explaining vs. written retrieval practice). We found a cascaded trend: In-between learning activities were more effective than afterstudy learning activities, whereas explaining was more effective than written retrieval practice. These findings suggest that the timing of learning activities is crucial to improve learning. Additionally, our findings reveal that explaining is not simply a result of retrieval practice.
Engaging Teachers: Measuring the Impact of Teachers on Student Attendance in Secondary School
Jing Liu & Susanna Loeb
Journal of Human Resources, forthcoming
Abstract:
On average, secondary school students in the United States are absent from school three weeks per year. For this study, we are able to link middle and high school teachers to the class-attendance of students in their classrooms and create measures of teachers' contributions to student class-attendance. We find systematic variation in teacher effectiveness at reducing unexcused class absences. These differences across teachers are as stable as those for student achievement, but teacher effectiveness on attendance only weakly correlates with their effects on achievement. A high value-added to attendance teacher has a stronger impact on students' likelihood of finishing high school than does a high value-added to achievement teacher. Moreover, high value-added to attendance teachers can motivate students to pursue higher academic goals. These positive effects are particularly salient for low-achieving and low-attendance students.
College Expectations Promote College Attendance: Evidence From a Quasiexperimental Sibling Study
Lauren Brumley, Michael Russell & Sara Jaffee
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
When adolescents are asked how likely they think it is that they will go to college, does their answer influence what they will actually do? Typically, it is difficult to determine whether college expectations promote academic achievement or just reflect a reasonable forecast of what is likely to happen to them. We used a sample of siblings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 1,766) to test whether associations between college expectations and educational attainment remained after accounting for unobserved family factors that may shape both educational expectations and attainment. Compared with their siblings, adolescents with higher college expectations were also 43% more likely to attend college, even when analyses controlled for grades and IQ. The effect of college expectations on college attendance was strongest among youths living in higher-socioeconomic-status families.
Long-term Effects from Early Exposure to Research: Evidence from the NIH "Yellow Berets''
Pierre Azoulay, Wesley Greenblatt & Misty Heggeness
NBER Working Paper, July 2019
Abstract:
Can a relatively short but intense exposure to frontier research alter the career trajectories of potential innovators? To answer this question, we study the careers and productivity of 3,075 medical school graduates who applied to the Associate Training Programs (ATP) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) during the turbulent period of the Vietnam War, 1965-1975. Carefully selecting on observables, we compare physicians who attended the program to those who passed a first admission screen but were ultimately not selected. We find that program participants were more likely to initially enter academic medicine, and less likely to switch to purely clinical endeavors as their careers unfolded. Over the life cycle, NIH trainees also garnered publications, citations, and grant funding at a much higher rate than synthetic controls. The direction of their research efforts was also durably imprinted by their training experience. In particular, NIH trainees appear to have acquired a distinct "translational'' style of biomedical research which became an implicit training model for physician-scientists as ATP alumni came to occupy the commanding heights of academic medicine throughout the United States.
Negotiating Intergovernmental Relations Under ESSA
Megan Duff & Priscilla Wohlstetter
Educational Researcher, July 2019, Pages 296-308
Abstract:
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has generated considerable buzz in education circles and the general media. But how much has really changed, and what does this mean for states as they begin the process of implementing a new federal education law? In this article, we apply principal-agent theory to explore intergovernmental relations under ESSA, focusing specifically on the relationship between the federal government (the principal) and state governments (the agents). First, we review power dynamics under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and ESSA, exploring implications of changes in the substance of both laws for the principal-agent problem. Next, using political discourse analysis, we show how shifts in the content of Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and its implementation by the current administration influenced the federal review process of state plans for the sixteen states that submitted plans under the early deadline. We find the federal government was most likely to provide feedback around Title I, Part A, Section 4 pertaining to accountability and school improvement. Ultimately, however, states that ignored or defied federal feedback were successful given both the limits ESSA places on U.S. Department of Education authority and the current administration’s reliance on negotiation over sanction. Thus far, this approach has ensured states are realizing the maximum flexibility available through the law, as all state plans were approved, regardless of whether states heeded federal feedback and complied with the law.