In 2015, Idaho adopted the nation's first direct admissions system and proactively admitted all high school graduates to a set of public institutions. This reimagination of the admissions process may reduce barriers to students' enrollment and improve access across geographic and socioeconomic contexts by removing many human capital,…

In 2015, Idaho adopted the nation's first direct admissions system and proactively admitted all high school graduates to a set of public institutions. This reimagination of the admissions process may reduce barriers to students' enrollment and improve access across geographic and socioeconomic contexts by removing many human capital,…

Scholarship on nonresident enrollment by public research universities has developed in isolation from scholarship on linkages between private high schools and selective private universities. We argue that these literatures are part of a broader story about the competition for students from affluent schools and communities. This manuscript analyzes…

Following a landmark court ruling in 2005, more than half of Germany's universities started charging tuition fees, which were subsequently abolished until 2015. We exploit the unusual lack of grandfathering in these policies to show that fees increase study effort and degree completion among incumbent students. However, fees also decrease…

Generally, need-based financial aid improves students' academic outcomes (Nguyen, Kramer & Evans, 2019). However, the largest source of need-based grant aid in the United States, the Federal Pell Grant Program (Pell), has a mixed evaluation record (Bettinger, 2004; Rubin, 2011; Marx & Turner, 2018; Park & Scott-Clayton, 2018;…

This dissertation contains three chapters, each investigating a question in American economic history. The first chapter is co-authored with Ran Abramitzky, Santiago Perez, and Joseph Price. In this work, we conduct a large-scale digitization of historical college registers, encompassing 2.7 million students at 65 elite US universities. We use…

We analyze the impact of a campus visit program and scholarship for admitted students on enrolling using data from a public research university. Differences in receiving the scholarship allow us to decompose the effect of the program on enrolling into separate visitation and scholarship effects. Visitation appears to increase enrollment, and the…

The Indiana Commission for Higher Education's College Readiness Reports are designed to provide information on students entering college. The reports encompass the entire first year of college for students who graduated high school the previous academic year and enrolled in college within one year. The reports also provide data beyond freshman…

This Remediation report is in response to Ohio Revised Code section 3345.061 (H), which requires the Chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) and the Superintendent of Public Instruction to issue a report recommending policies and strategies for reducing the need for academic remediation and developmental courses at state…

This report from the Student Transitions Project (STP) features selected research findings on the transitions of high school graduates into B.C. public, B.C. private and non-B.C. post-secondary institutions. This study was enabled by a linkage of encrypted Personal Education Numbers (PENs) between the STP 2018 enrollment table to two other data…

In fulfillment of Ohio Revised Code section 3333.041 (A) (1), the Chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) has published a listing by school district of the number of 2017 high school graduates who attended a state institution of higher education in the 2017-2018 academic year. The listing provides the percentage of each…

What are the benefits and costs of attending a selective public research university instead of a less-selective university or college? This study examines the 2001-2011 Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) program, which guaranteed University of California admission to students in the top four percent of California high school classes. Employing…

This newsletter provides highlights of the latest research from the Student Transitions Project (STP), with a focus on the first transitions of British Columbia (B.C.) grade 12 graduates into B.C. public post-secondary education. The study was conducted by the Student Transitions Project (STP), a collaborative research partnership involving B.C.'s…

Together, the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Department of Higher Education are committed to reducing the need for academic remediation and developmental courses at state institutions of higher education. Accomplishing this goal requires both agencies as well as the systems they oversee to work collaboratively to increase the likelihood…

In fulfillment of Ohio Revised Code section 3333.041 (A) (1), the Chancellor of the Ohio Department of Higher Education (ODHE) has published a listing by school district of the number of 2018 high school graduates that attended a state institution of higher education in the 2018-2019 academic year. The listing provides the percentage of each…