This dissertation consists of three chapters that contribute to the fields of macroeconomics, economic development, and entrepreneurship. In the first chapter, "Entrepreneurship Selection and Performance in the U.S. and Across Countries: The Role of Human Capital," I seek to establish a set of stylized facts related to entrepreneurship…

Statement of Purpose and Method of Study: The purpose of this study is to describe the perspectives, processes, and experiences identified during the implementation of the SIG Transformation Model in a rural school district in Mississippi. The Transformation Model is one of the four approved prescriptive models identified by the federal government…

Chapter 1 investigates asks the question how do financial frictions affect the type of human capital investments that students make in college? To study this question, I build a novel dataset covering more than 700,000 U.S. students, merging commencement records with address histories, credit bureau records, and professional resumes. I document…

This paper builds a model of human capital accumulation driven by increasing specialization of the workforce. Individuals increase the efficiency of time dedicated to human capital acquisition by focusing investments on narrower sets of skills. The evolution of secondary and post-secondary curricula in the United States from 1870-2000 confirms the…

Higher education institutions in Ghana are challenged in providing access to affordable education to accommodate all qualified students for postsecondary education. Most Ghanaian students seek skills and knowledge to prepare them for a global workforce. The study's purpose was to investigate the adaptation of the U.S. community college's 2-year…

The purpose of this study was to examine the dispersion of human capital resources within one school district in southern California and compare the use of personnel at each school to the desired allocation informed by the district's strategies and staffing formula. The district's resource distribution was also compared to that of the Evidence…

Communities relay expectations of behavior that influence residents' decision making processes. The study's purpose was to define and identify social, cultural, and human capital variables relevant to understanding community expectations of postsecondary attainment. The study sought an operational model of community expectancy that would allow…

This dissertation contains three chapters that explore various aspects of the economics of education, with a focus on higher education. In particular, the first two chapters deal with college major as it relates to earnings, occupational choice, and high school curriculum, while the third discusses the relationship between college-student match…

This study employed mixed methods, engaging both quantitative and qualitative inquiries. In terms of the quantitative inquiry, the purpose of this study was to explore and assess gender-based salary inequities at a Carnegie Classified Research High university in the Intermountain West. Qualitative inquiry was used to follow up and contextually…

Currently, there are nearly a million high-achieving, low-income students in the United States. In the nation's most selective institutions of higher education, students from low-income families have been persistently under-represented. Elite colleges, in particular, have only recently begun admitting low-income students in large numbers, a result…

This dissertation seeks to increase our understanding of the factors that lead to student success at community colleges. Using data on a cohort of students enrolled at a two-year college, this dissertation presents the results of a longitudinal analysis. Citing the results of several persistence studies as well as the literature on…

Increased accountability through federal and state education policies has resulted in a growing demand for educators to access, understand, and utilize the various types of data to adapt their practice. These data include student work, district benchmarks, observation of instruction, and high-stakes state assessments, among others. Despite the…

While "ability" has long featured prominently in economic models and empirical studies of labor markets, economists have only recently begun to consider how personality and attitudes--noncognitive factors--influence behavior both from a theoretical and empirical standpoint. This dissertation incorporates noncognitive factors into…

An important number of high-school graduates start their post-secondary educational careers at academic 2-year colleges even though returns to graduation are negligible. However, the returns to transferring to 4-year colleges are large: academic 2-year colleges act as a "stepping stone" in which agents learn about themselves in a cheaper and less…

The purpose of this study was to discover if core characteristics exist forming a Vietnamese community college model and to determine if the characteristics would explain the model. This study utilized three theoretical orientations while reviewing the existing literature, formulating the research questions, examining the data and drawing…