Leveraging rich data on the universe of Texas high school graduates, we estimate how the relationship between geographic access to public two- and four-year postsecondary institutions and postsecondary outcomes varies across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status. We find that students are...

Roughly 25 percent of first-year college students do not return for a second year. This has led to a range of policies and interventions aimed at increasing college performance, persistence, and graduation. In this article, we assess whether cognitive strategy instruction (CSI) has the potential...

We find that test score optional policies harm the likelihood of elite college admission for high achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. We show that at one elite college campus, SAT (and ACT) scores predict first year college GPA equally well across income and other demographic...

We compile, transcribe, and standardize historical records for 2.5 million students at 65 elite (private and public) U.S. colleges. By combining these data with more recent survey and administrative data, we assemble the largest dataset on the socioeconomic backgrounds of students at American...

In this paper, we assemble the most comprehensive dataset to date on the characteristics of colleges and universities, including dates of operation, institutional setting, student body, staff, and finance data from 2002 to 2023. We provide an extensive description of what is known and unknown...

Underrepresented minority (URM) college students have been steadily earning degrees in relatively less lucrative fields of study since the mid-1990s. A decomposition reveals that this widening gap is principally explained by rising stratification at public research universities, many of which...

We explore how socio-economic background shapes academia, collecting the largest dataset of U.S. academics' backgrounds and research output. Individuals from poorer backgrounds have been severely underrepresented for seven decades, especially in humanities and elite universities. Father's...

We show how to construct a ranking of U.S. undergraduate programs based on students' revealed preferences. We construct examples of national and regional rankings, using hand-collected data on 3,240 high- achieving students. Our statistical model extends models used for ranking players in...