IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v106y2025ics0272775725000172.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Failing to Finish: The role of employer effects on advanced education attainment

Author

Listed:
  • Chesney, Alexander J.

Abstract

This paper investigates how promotion policies impact advanced education attainment on employees throughout a career. Using administrative data from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), I leverage a natural experiment where academic credentials were masked from promotion consideration. I exploit an event study and difference-in-differences design to find individuals are 14 percentage points (26 percent relative to the mean) less likely to complete a master’s degree when education credentials are no longer considered for promotion. I then explore possible mechanisms by describing how a graduate degree’s promotion premium fluctuates before and after the policy change. I show attendance at for-profit institutions declined substantially after the policy reform; however, I find the promotion premium of a master’s degree from a for-profit to be similar to other academic institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Chesney, Alexander J., 2025. "Failing to Finish: The role of employer effects on advanced education attainment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:106:y:2025:i:c:s0272775725000172
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102637
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775725000172
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2025.102637?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Human capital investment; Master’s degrees; For-profit;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I22 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Educational Finance; Financial Aid
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:106:y:2025:i:c:s0272775725000172. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.