A study was conducted to see whether peer effects could be observed among undergraduates at Williams College, an elite four-year liberal arts school. Specifically, the study explored whether students in the bottom third of their class, with average SAT's of about 1300, would perform better in...

This paper estimates the effect of attending historically black college and universities (HBCUs) on future wages of black students.

Students' intellectual, social and personal development is highly influenced by peers during the college years. These changes can be understood in terms of social comparison theory, which outlines the consequences for group dynamics of people's need to evaluate their opinions and abilities....

The elapsed time taken to earn a Ph.D. in economics is analyzed with data from 620 (of about 950) 1996-97 Ph.D.s. The median is 5.3 years. A duration model indicates that those students at several of the most highly regarded programs, those supported by no-work fellowships, and those holding a...

The market for undergraduate education has many similarities to an arms race. A school's position - relative to other schools - determines its success in attracting students and student quality. Its position, in turn, is largely determined by the size of its student subsidies, the difference...

It is increasingly clear that price competition is escalating in the market for higher education. We attempt to understand how price competition would work in higher education and explore the likely long run equilibrium structure of prices in that context. We draw inferences using both...

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of the analogy of higher education to a for-profit industry where schools are seen as firms and students as customers.

Although considerable effort has been expended on measuring the returns to education in the U.S. and on modeling the individual decision-making process in human capital investment, surprisingly little work has been done in terms of attempts to forecast college enrollment rates in the U.S....

The quality of the education a student gets at a college or university depends both on the school's resources - faculty, facilities, libraries - and importantly on the quality of his or her fellow students. He or she simply learns more - better, faster, more deeply - in the company of able...