Learning Status
The Effect of College and University Endowments on Financial Aid, Admissions, and Student Composition
George Bulman
NBER Working Paper, August 2022
Abstract:
This paper examines how private college and university endowments affect financial aid, admissions selectivity, and the economic and racial composition of incoming students. Because endowment levels are a function of expenditures and alumni giving, which are endogenous to the outcomes of interest, the design exploits changes in endowments stemming from variation in investment returns over time and across peer institutions. Estimates reveal that growing endowments generate large and persistent increases in spending overall and for instruction, student services, and administration in particular. However, wealthier colleges and universities do not increase the number of students they serve or the fraction of students receiving aid, and only modestly increase the generosity of aid packages. Instead, these institutions offset higher freshman yield rates by becoming more selective and enrolling fewer low-income students and students of color. Overall, colleges and universities appear to use greater endowment wealth to increase spending and to become more selective, resulting in higher institutional rankings, but do not increase the size or diversity of their student bodies. The results are important in light of the preferential tax treatment of endowments and interest in increasing access to elite postsecondary education for underserved populations.
Socioeconomic roots of academic faculty
Allison Morgan et al.
Nature Human Behaviour, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the special role of tenure-track faculty in society, training future researchers and producing scholarship that drives scientific and technological innovation, the sociodemographic characteristics of the professoriate have never been representative of the general population. Here we systematically investigate the indicators of faculty childhood socioeconomic status and consider how they may limit efforts to diversify the professoriate. Combining national-level data on education, income and university rankings with a 2017–2020 survey of 7,204 US-based tenure-track faculty across eight disciplines in STEM, social science and the humanities, we show that faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a Ph.D. Moreover, this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years. Our results suggest that the professoriate is, and has remained, accessible disproportionately to the socioeconomically privileged, which is likely to deeply shape their scholarship and their reproduction.
The Multidimensional Impact of Teachers on Students
Nathan Petek & Nolan Pope
Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
For decades, policymakers and researchers have used value-added models that rely solely on student test scores to measure teacher quality. However, since teaching ability is multidimensional, test-score value-added measures of teacher quality may not fully capture the impact of teachers on students. In this paper, we use test-score and non-test-score measures of student achievement and behavior from over a million students in the Los Angeles Unified School District to estimate multiple dimensions of teacher quality. We find that test-score and nontest-score measures of teacher quality are only weakly correlated and that both measures of teacher quality affect students’ performance in high school. A teacher-removal policy simulation that uses both dimensions of teacher quality improves most long-term student outcomes by over 50 percent compared to a policy that uses test scores alone. Our results also show that for high school outcomes the effects of teachers in later grades are larger than in earlier grades and that performance in core elementary school subjects matters more than other subjects.
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Putting the K in Rank: How Kindergarten Classrooms Impact Short and Long-Run Outcomes
Derek Rury
University of Chicago Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
A student’s class rank has important short and long-term effects on important educational outcomes. Despite our growing understanding of these rank effects, we still do not know how early in a child’s academic career they begin. To address this, I use data from the Tennessee STAR project, which randomly assigned over 6,323 kindergarteners to classroom environments, to study the impact of kindergarten class rank on a host of short and long-run outcomes. I find a strong, causal relationship between one’s kindergarten classroom rank and subsequent test scores, high school achievement and performance on college entrance exams. I also find that having a higher rank in kindergarten causes an increase in study effort, value of school and initiative in the classroom. I also leverage the design of project STAR to test various mechanisms and address several outstanding issues in the rank literature, including the role of tracking, parental effort and teacher-level characteristics in driving the effects of class rank.
College Students’ Access to Academic Accommodations Over Time: Evidence of a Matthew Effect in Higher Education
Robert Weis & Sophie Bittner
Psychological Injury and Law, September 2022, Pages 236–252
Abstract:
Changes in disability law and professional practice were designed to give individuals with disabilities greater access to protections and services by emphasizing functional limitations and self-reported problems over a formal diagnosis and third-party documentation. It is not known if these changes are associated with increased access to accommodations among college students with disabilities, most of whom struggle academically yet never receive formal support. We examined college students’ access to accommodations as a function of institutional type, selectivity, and cost over time. Although access to accommodations increased from 2.8 to 5.2% over the past 12 years, this change was largely driven by students attending America’s most selective and expensive private institutions. Access to accommodations was significantly lower and remained relatively stable among students attending 2-year public colleges. These findings suggest a Matthew effect in higher education in which students most in need of academic support are increasingly least likely to receive it. We suggest four ways to reduce this access inequality: (1) encourage universal design, (2) facilitate access for students with disabilities from disadvantaged backgrounds, (3) critically evaluate documentation from students without real-world limitations, and (4) insist on evidence of symptom or performance validity before granting accommodations.
The Value of College Athletics in the Labor Market: Results from a Resume Audit Field Experiment
James Paul et al.
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Employers may favor applicants who played college sports if athletics participation contributes to leadership, conscientiousness, discipline, and other traits that are desirable for labor-market productivity. We conduct a resume audit to estimate the causal effect of listing collegiate athletics on employer callbacks and test for subgroup effects by ethnicity, gender, and sport type. We applied to more than 450 jobs on a large, well-known job board. For each job listing, we submitted two fictitious resumes, one of which was randomly assigned to include collegiate varsity athletics. Overall, listing a college sport does not produce a statistically significant change in the likelihood of receiving a callback or interview request. We find no statistically significant differences within ethnicities or genders.
College Football Performance, Student Earnings, and the Gender Wage Gap
Monica Harber Carney
Education Finance and Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Fluctuations in U.S. college football team performance have been shown to have impacts on the student experience. This study explores the long-run implications, examining the impact of college football team performance relative to the period of student attendance on future earnings. Better college football team performance during the early years of school attendance increases average wages of males, but does not impact female wages. Supplemental evidence suggests that positive shocks to student social networks may partly explain the positive impact on earnings. Better team performance near the time of graduation increases average wages for both genders.
The impact of basketball malfeasance on the university and its rankings
Abigail Cormier et al.
Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Collegiate sports have a profound impact on a university beyond athletics. Successful athletics have been shown to have a positive impact on the institution. Likewise, athletic malfeasance has been shown to negatively impact the university. We analyse tournament bans in Division I college basketball as a signal for university quality in rankings (U.S. News and World Report’s peer rankings), student quality, and other university measures. We find evidence that following a postseason tournament ban, applications from students in the top ten percent of their high school class decrease, some evidence that academic test scores decrease, and some evidence that the amount of alumni donations decrease. These results suggest that an athletic department’s malfeasance leads to a decline in university quality. We do, however, find that peer rankings from faculty administrators fall the year of the ban, only to increase slightly two years after sanctions for athletic malfeasance.
Disaggregating the Effects of STEM Education and Apprenticeships on Economic Mobility: Evidence From the LaunchCode Program
Jason Jabbari et al.
Washington University in St. Louis Working Paper, July 2022
Abstract:
Despite an increase in employer-aligned certificate and apprenticeship programs, there is limited research examining the impact of these programs on economic outcomes. Moreover, for research that has explored the impact of these programs, it is unclear whether the outcomes are a product of the courses alone or the apprenticeships and other work-related experiences that many of these programs provide. In order to fill these gaps, we conduct a large-scale impact analysis on LC101, a unique technology certificate and apprenticeship program offered by LaunchCode. We merge administrative data containing entrance exam scores with survey data for individuals (a) that were not accepted into the program, (b) that were accepted but did not complete the course, (c) that completed the course but not the apprenticeship, and (d) that completed both the course and the apprenticeship. By using entrance exam scores as an instrumental variable, we conduct an intent-to-treat model, finding that being accepted into the program was significantly associated with increased earnings, as well as increased probabilities of working in a STEM profession. Then, by using machine-learning generated multinomial propensity score weights, we conduct a treatment on the treated model, finding that these increases appear to be primarily driven by the apprenticeship component.
Industry Choice and within Industry Earnings Effects
Eric Brunner, Shaun Dougherty & Stephen Ross
NBER Working Paper, August 2022
Abstract:
We examine the effect of attending stand-alone technical high schools on the industry of employment and within industry earnings premiums using a regression discontinuity design. We study the universe of students that applied to the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System (CTECS) between 2006 and 2011. CTECS admission shifts male applicants towards higher paying industries that align with CTECS programs of study, but has a much more modest impact on the industry of employment for female applicants. Further, key industry effects observed for females shift these applicants towards lower paying industries. Surprisingly, overall industry earnings premiums and treatment effects of CTECS on earnings premiums are similar for female applicants in traditionally male dominated industries like manufacturing and construction. However, female representation in these industries is too small to contribute substantially to female earnings in aggregate. For male applicants, mechanism analyses show that treatment effects in manufacturing and construction depend in part on work experience while in high school and as a young adult. Alternatively, in professional and office support industries, treatment effects on earnings arise through selection of students with high 8th grade tests scores into these industries because they offer a higher direct return to cognitive skills.
Spillover Effects of Recruiting Teachers for School Turnaround: Evidence From Tennessee
Adam Kho et al.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many districts and states have implemented incentives to recruit teachers to low-performing schools, and previous research has found evidence that these incentives are effective at attracting teachers. However, effects on the schools and students these teachers leave behind have not been examined. This study focuses on the spillover effects of recruiting effective teachers to Tennessee’s Innovation Zone (iZone) schools. We find the short-term effects of losing these teachers range from −0.04 to −0.12 SDs in student test score gains, with larger negative effects when more effective teachers leave. However, combining both these negative effects in schools teachers leave and the positive effects in iZone schools yields overall net positive effects.
Round and Round They Go: The Relationship Between Changing Grades and Schools and Teacher Quality and Absence Rates
Tasminda Dhaliwal, Ijun Lai & Katharine Strunk
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research on teacher churn has produced conflicting conclusions as to its impact on students and teachers. We bring clarity to this work by combining and expanding on analytical approaches used in earlier research to determine how and when different types of churn (i.e., grade, school) impact teacher effectiveness and attendance. Using data from the Los Angeles Unified School District, our results suggest differences based on analytical approach but ultimately show that changing schools and grades may be less of an issue than previously reported. In addition, in the case of school churn, a beneficial match in their new school sites may matter more for teacher outcomes than potential disruptive effects of churn. We conclude with implications for policy and future research.