Broadband internet increases the hourly wages of college-educated workers. However, little is known about how broadband internet affects the wages of workers with different college majors. I combine several Norwegian data sets to answer this question. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband infrastructure and provided plausibly…

Policymakers enacted a series of reforms in the mid-2000s that significantly expanded benefits in the federal student loan program for students pursuing graduate degrees. These reforms allow students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance for their degrees and use an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) program that offers loan forgiveness after 20…

This dissertation examined the relationship between student engagement in college and subsequent employment status and early career earnings in a public university. This study sought to understand whether or not student academic and social experiences in college are related to post-baccalaureate early career earnings. The literature review…

A burgeoning literature has documented the importance of elite colleges. Yet, little is known about access to elite education and its labor market implications in China, a country that produces one in every five college graduates in the world. College admission in China is governed by a single exam--the national college entrance exam, and the…

This dissertation contains three essays discussing government policy in higher education, the effects of online social networks during college on students after graduating, and how to use search data as a tool to recover characteristics of both products and customers to estimate demand. In the first chapter, co-authored with Shengmao Cao, we study…

This study investigated the percentage of Round Rock Independent School District (ISD) graduates from 2012/13 through 2017/18 who completed one or more career and technical education (CTE) programs of study and attained outcomes after high school graduation including college enrollment, degree or certificate attainment, and employment. The study…

International students represent a large percentage of the student population in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs at American colleges and universities. Although graduates of these programs are identified as having high employability, productivity, and earnings in the 21st-century job market, there is limited…

Wage differentials across college majors are huge and have been increasing. The type of college education becomes important for college students in terms of future earnings. Understanding the treatment effect of major choice in a certain occupation is difficult because of the sorting behavior and the effect of occupation choice. In order to…

The U.S. Department of Education's (ED's) National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) is the nation's preeminent source of information on how students and their families pay for college. This paper explores how NCES can leverage linkages to federal and non-federal data sources to improve…

The Associate of Arts-Direct Transfer Articulation Agreement (AA-DTA) is the single largest transfer degree awarded by the community and technical (CTC) colleges. The traditional goal of this degree is completion of general education requirements in order to prepare for transfer to a four-year institution. However, a Guided Pathways framework…

Using two representative samples of some 74,000 students and 11,000 graduates, respectively, we analyse the accuracy of students' wage expectations given their individual characteristics. We find that students are aware of the effects of most of their own characteristics, as a large number of determinants of expected and realised salaries do not…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the status of recent Korean four-year college students' acquisition of vocational qualification certificates (hereinafter "certificates" or "qualifications"), the factors that influence certificate acquisition, and the resulting employment and wage effects.…

Student feedback is essential to maintaining quality and relevance in the education system. Through surveying former students, BC Student Outcomes provides the information needed to help shape post-secondary education in British Columbia. Every year, BC Student Outcomes collects feedback from former students who took post-secondary programs,…

Students are typically given a large amount of freedom to choose the level of "curricular dispersion": the tight focus or lack thereof in the courses they elect to take while in college. There is little evidence about what predicts students' curricular dispersion, whether it affects later college or labor force outcomes, or, in fact, how…

This third installment of "Hard Times" updates the previous analyses of college majors, unemployment, and earnings over the Great Recession. While there is wide variation by college majors, hard times have become better times for most college graduates, but the recovery is far from complete. Hard times are becoming better times for most…