IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qsh/wpaper/175226.html

Access to Four-Year Public Colleges and Degree Completion

Author

Listed:
  • Joshua Goodman
  • Michael Hurwitz
  • Jonathan Smith

Abstract

Does access to four-year colleges affect degree completion for students who would otherwise attend two-year colleges? Admission to Georgia?s four-year public sector requires minimum SAT scores. Regression discontinuity estimates show that access to this sector increases four-year college enrollment and college quality, largely by diverting students from two-year colleges. Access substantially increases bachelor?s degree completion rates for these relatively low-skilled students. SAT retaking behavior suggests students value access to four-year public colleges, though perhaps less than they should. Our results imply that absolute college quality matters more than match quality and suggest potential unintended consequences of free community college proposals.

Suggested Citation

  • Joshua Goodman & Michael Hurwitz & Jonathan Smith, "undated". "Access to Four-Year Public Colleges and Degree Completion," Working Paper 175226, Harvard University OpenScholar.
    • Handle: RePEc:qsh:wpaper:175226
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://scholar.harvard.edu/joshuagoodman/node/175226
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Celeste K. Carruthers & Jilleah G. Welch, 2015. "Not Whether, but Where? Pell Grants and College Choices," Working Papers 2015-04, University of Tennessee, Department of Economics, revised 28 Sep 2015.
    2. Eleanor Wiske Dillon & Jeffrey Andrew Smith, 2020. "The Consequences of Academic Match between Students and Colleges," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 55(3), pages 767-808.
    3. Brian Duncan & Hani Mansour & Bryson Rintala, 2019. "Weighing The Military Option: The Effects Of Wartime Conditions On Investments In Human Capital," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 57(1), pages 264-282, January.
    4. Jack Mountjoy & Brent Hickman, 2020. "The Returns to College(s): Estimating Value-Added and Match Effects in Higher Education," Working Papers 2020-08, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    5. Juliana Londono-Velez & Catherine Rodriguez & Fabio SÔøΩnchez?, 2017. "The Intended and Unintended Impacts of a Merit-Based Financial Aid Program for the Poor: The Case of Ser Pilo Paga," Documentos CEDE 15466, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    6. Carruthers, Celeste K. & Welch, Jilleah G., 2019. "Not whether, but where? Pell grants and college choices," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 1-19.
    7. Jonathan Smith & Joshua Goodman & Michael Hurwitz, 2020. "The Economic Impact of Access to Public Four-Year Colleges," NBER Working Papers 27177, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Gurantz, Oded & Pender, Matea & Mabel, Zachary & Larson, Cassandra & Bettinger, Eric, 2020. "Virtual advising for high-achieving high school students," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    9. Benjamin Castleman & Joshua Goodman, 2018. "Intensive College Counseling and the Enrollment and Persistence of Low-Income Students," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 13(1), pages 19-41, Winter.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:qsh:wpaper:175226. 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: Richard Brandon The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Richard Brandon to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cbrssus.html .

    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.