Social Science Research Council Transitions to College Project

1
Social Science Research CouncilTransitions to
College Project

• Contributions from the Field of Economics to the
  Study of College Access and Success
• Bridget Terry Long
• Associate Professor
• Harvard Graduate School of Education

2

• From the Perspective of a Researcher

• Lots of useful research but hard to access,
  particularly out of your field
• Misperceptions and unhelpful arguments across
  fields

• Education especially benefits from
  interdisciplinary perspectives -- complex process
  with many different aspects and goals
• To truly understand an issue, we need to study it
  from micro (qualitative), macro (quantitative),
  and case study perspectives that inform each other

3

• The Approach of Economists

Adapting the definition of Cohn and Geske (1990),
the Economics of Higher Education is the study
of how society chooses, with and without the use
of money, to employ scare resources to produce
various activities (e.g. types of education) over
time and to distribute them, now and in the
future, among various groups of students.

• Models characterized by mathematics (allows for
  comparative statics analysis)
• Systematic consideration of market failures,
  incentives, cost/benefit analysis, uncertainty,
  distributional concerns and incidence

4

• The Approach of Economists

• Focus Causation (concerns about Endogeneity)
• Issues with Selection, ability and other Biases
• Strategies to isolate an effect from other
  factors
• Regression Models with special tools (e.g. IVs)
• Natural Experiments

• Informed by other fields (sociology, education,
  etc)
• What factors might matter?
• How do the effects happen (i.e. the mechanisms)?
  If happening at micro level, what do we expect to
  see at the macro level?
• Policies that provide nice quasi-experimental set
  ups

5

• Essay Outline

346 Papers Referenced

• INTRO ECONOMICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION
•  
• COLLEGE PREPARATION
• Impact of School Resources on Outcomes
• Role of Academic Preparation and Performance
• Role of Parents, Expectations, and Information

• COLLEGE ACCESS
• College Demand The Economic Framework
• Differences by Background
• Beyond Access How Student Choose which College
• Issues with Admissions Affirmative Action,
  Standardized Tests, and Other Issues

6

• Essay Outline

• FINANCING POSTSECONDARY SCHOOL
• College Costs, Affordability, and Justification
  for Aid
• Indirect Subsidies to Students in Higher
  Education
• An Introduction to Direct Financial Aid to
  Students
• The Enrollment Effects of Price and Grants
• The Enrollment Effects of Other Types of Aid
• Is Financial Aid an Effective Policy for Access?
• The Effect of Aid on College Choice
• Other Effects of Financial Aid

7

• Essay Outline

• RETENTION AND COMPLETION
• Factors that Influence Persistence and Completion
• College Academic Behavior and Performance
• The Returns to Education
• Does College Quality Matter?
•  
• APPENDIX SUPPLY-SIDE ISSUES

8

• The Need for Future Research

• Often limited by data (and sometimes design) to
  answer important questions
• Traditional Sources
• NCES (NELS88, HSB, NLS72, NPSAS)
• BLS (NLSY79, NLSY97, October CPS)
• New Push Administrative and State datasets
• Ohio Board of Regents HEI
• Florida Data Warehouse

9

• The Need for Future Research

• College Preparation
• What is good preparation? Addressing the
  disconnect between high schools and colleges
• Why do students not take the right courses?
• Roles of expectations and information

• College Access
• Clarify the role of parents, teachers, peers, and
  neighborhoods
• Continue to relax the assumptions of models (no
  such thing as perfect information)
• Differences by race, ethnicity, and gender

10

• The Need for Future Research

• Financing a College Education
• Debate about importance of liquidity constraints
• Relative role of financial need versus academic
  preparation (and their interactions with each
  other)
• Impact of growing orientation to loans
• Impact of grants versus loans versus work study
  (how the particular format or design matters)

• Retention and Completion
• Why do students not finish?
• What interventions and college inputs matter?
• Role of financial aid and employment
• Returns to less traditional pathways