We often think that a college degree will open doors to opportunity regardless of one's background or upbringing. In this eye-opening book, two of today's leading economists argue that higher education alone cannot overcome the lasting effects of inequality that continue to plague us, and offer sensible solutions for building a more just and…

This article explores Belman and Heywood's sheepskin effect hypothesis using a modified Mincerian wage equation to test the sheepskin effect of returns on education in Colombia. This analysis is based on the 2014 Living Standards Survey from the National Department of Statistics. It includes variables that capture the possession of different…

Between 1991 and 2016, employment among White, Black, and Latino workers grew by 20 percent, while employment in good jobs soared by 35 percent. Yet the opportunities and benefits of the modern economy have not accrued evenly across the three groups. Discrimination and a history of racial injustice in this country have led to Whites gaining a…

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Unequal Race for Good Jobs: How Whites Made Outsized Gains in Education and Good Jobs Compared to Blacks and Latinos." Between 1991 and 2016, White workers built on their past educational and economic privileges to attain bachelor's and graduate degrees in historically high numbers and…

This article describes a simulation activity designed to teach students about the wage gap. The wage gap is an important topic in many sociology classrooms, but it can be difficult to convey the accumulated disadvantage experienced by women and racial/ethnic minorities to students using in-class discussions, lectures, or assigned readings alone.…

The most significant investment California made in the 1960s was the creation of, arguably, the best public higher education system in the world. The 1965 Master Plan for Higher Education created a three-tiered system of higher education that provided a place in college for any Californian seeking the opportunity. From research universities to…

Investing in community college workforce training is a central part of the Biden administration's agenda for improving the lives of American families. Now more than ever, as the nation's economy enters a post-pandemic period of significant organizational and technological change, community colleges are well-situated to help millions of low-income…

In partnership with the Postsecondary Value Commission, we conducted a thought experiment on the costs of inequality in the US education system. Our simulation found that the US economy misses out on $956 billion dollars per year, along with numerous nonmonetary benefits, as a result of postsecondary attainment gaps by economic status and…

In this report, we present the results of a thought experiment in which we estimated the potential costs and benefits to society of achieving equality in educational attainment and related workforce outcomes by race/ethnicity, class, and gender. We conducted this thought experiment to clarify the role that education can play in reducing…

Many Americans would agree that all people should have equal educational opportunity and equal pay for equal work. And yet, inequality in postsecondary education access, college completion, and post-college outcomes such as wages stubbornly persists, along with the impression that achieving equal outcomes would be too expensive and would take too…

Overall, too few students are completing two-year college. Those who complete are still starting off unequally. About one-third of students earning academic degrees do not transfer, but rather go directly to work and find their degree has little value in the labor market. Research suggests they could have benefitted from having marketable skills…

The ethnic and racial diversity of the residents of the United States of America is one of the country's unique strengths; however, Black, Latinx, Pacific Islander, Native, and certain Asian American workers face wide racial inequities in educational attainment, employment, and income. Additional workforce policies are needed now to counter…

In traditional signaling models, education provides a way for individuals to sort themselves by ability. Employers in turn use education to statistically discriminate, paying wages that reflect the average productivity of workers with the same given level of education. In this paper, we provide evidence that education (specifically, attending…

This Legislative Report Card assesses how California's governor and Legislature have handled bills it says affected racial inequities--or might have if they had been signed into law. The report examines an eclectic collection of bills that addressed the minimum wage, the creation of a single-payer health care system and other issues in education,…