of all college students fail to earn a bachelor's degree, we study a model of risky college completion. The central idea … is that students drop out of college mainly because they fail to complete the requirements for earning a degree. This … introduces two levels of ability selection that reinforce each other. (i) In college, low ability students typically do not …

This paper is motivated by the fact that nearly half of U.S. college students drop out without earning a bachelor … develop a quantitative model of college choice. The innovation is to model in detail how students progress towards a college … predict whether they will graduate with at least 80% probability. As a result, stylized policies that insure students against …