In the last two decades, access to higher education has increased substantially in Latin America. The quantity of new programs available has created concerns about education quality, which has implications for the labor market. We use rich longitudinal data from a Peruvian cohort tracked from...

Research has shown that attending a relatively selective four-year college over a less selective alternative is positively related to bachelor's degree completion. This paper revisits that question with a novel data-set of over 11,000 sets of twins in the United States and information on...

In this paper, we estimate the rate of return to first degrees, masters degrees and PhDs in Britain using data from the Labour Force Survey. We estimate returns to broad subject groups and more narrowly defined disciplines, distinguishing returns by gender and attempting to control for...

Holzer and Baum's recent book, 'Making College Work: Pathways to Success for Disadvantaged Students,' provides an excellent up-to-date review of higher education. My review first summarizes its key themes: 1) who gains from college and why? 2) mismatch and the need for more structure; 3) problems...

In this paper we estimate the impacts of the "pathways" chosen by community college students - in terms of desired credentials and fields of study, as well as other choices and outcomes along the paths - on the attainment of credentials with labor market value. We focus on the extent to which...

We examine the impact of US colleges and universities switching from an academic quarter calendar to a semester calendar on student outcomes. Using panel data on the near universe of four-year nonprofit institutions and leveraging quasi-experimental variation in calendars across institutions and...

There has been a rising interest in understanding better the impact of college choices on wages, an interest motivated by concerns about increasing wage inequalities, about increasing costs of elite colleges, and about the perceived increasing roles of highly educated individuals in maintaining...

This paper uses the NLSY to examine 1) the returns to two-year college, 2) whether attendance at a two-year college helps students to transfer to four-year college, and 3) whether reducing tuition would alter attendance by enough to affect labor outcomes. I find that the returns to a year of...

Using data from nearly 1.2 million Black SAT takers, we estimate the impacts of initially enrolling in an Historically Black College and University (HBCU) on educational, economic, and financial outcomes. We control for the college application portfolio and compare students with similar...

Understanding the economic payoff to human investments is very important from the standpoint both of individuals and of society. Correctly estimating these impacts necessitates having a well-developed idea of the microeconomic determinants of human behavior. Without this, empirical analyses of...