While the direct impacts of minimum wage changes on employment have received considerable attention, these policy changes have the potential to impact skill attainment by changing the opportunity cost of college enrollment. Using institutional data on college enrollment and program completion, we find that enrollment falls markedly among students…

While higher education has been known as the great equalizer, the racial wealth gap of college graduates is overlooked: Among college-educated households (2013) the median net worth was $359,928 for white households; $250,637 for Asian households; $49,606 for Hispanic households; and $32,780 households for Black households. Although MSIs…

A college degree or credential is a crucial stepping-stone to the middle class, and American colleges and universities play an essential role in building a more prosperous, equitable country. However, too many colleges routinely and disproportionately enroll students who end up struggling to repay or, worse, default on their student debt. "A…

We estimate the wage returns of undergraduates who attained their degree via Scotland's Further Education College Articulation policy. We contribute to existing literature by adding to the research on varying returns based on paths to acquiring a degree, while also being the first paper to examine the returns associated with Scottish Articulation.…

This dissertation presents three separate essays. The first two essays explore the gender wage gap and its dynamics in urban China from 1995 to 2018. The first chapter decomposes the gender wage gap based on the observed wage for workers with a precise measure of the hourly wages. The first chapter examines the observed average gender wage gap in…

"Education at a Glance" is the authoritative source for information on the state of education around the world. It provides data on the structure, finances and performance of education systems across OECD countries and a number of accession and partner countries. More than 100 charts and tables in this publication -- as well as links to…

Throughout this report, we will investigate trends for administrators overall and provide further analyses on three key administrator positions: presidents, provosts, and chief human resources officers (CHROs). This report starts with an investigation of trends in representation and pay equity by gender (women, men) among administrators over the…

The purpose of this study is to identify common traits shared by first-generation college graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds who grew up in the inner-city. This research was inspired by Duckworth's grit research at Westpoint Academy which sought to predict which cadets would graduate (Duckworth, 2007). Sixty-three first-generation college…

This paper examines indicators related to earnings and student loan debt for evaluating return on investment (ROI) for postsecondary education. It first considers four different options for measuring earnings, arguing that measures of postsecondary value should include investment-to-earnings and earnings growth metrics. The paper then discusses…

This paper examines the potential of business administration vs. computer science degrees in terms of earnings, job security, and job satisfaction. The paper focuses on earnings potential five years and ten years after the completion of business administration and computer science degrees. Moreover, the paper presents the income changes with…

According to common indicators such as the prestige of vocational education and training (VET), enrolment rates in initial VET (IVET) programmes, or the involvement of private partners, the Swiss VET system enjoys a high standing. In this paper, we took a different approach and examined the effects of educational resources (educational degree) and…

This memo estimates the main economic benefits of tuition-free college in Illinois. These economic benefits are compared with the costs of making tuition free. In addition, the authors consider possible fiscal benefits of tuition-free college and whether these fiscal benefits for Illinois will offset the fiscal costs of making tuition free. This…

This introductory report outlines the challenges of postsecondary completion, the variable value provided by a postsecondary pathway, and the corresponding cost and debt. Together, these challenges create an inequitable, ineffective, and unsustainable U.S. postsecondary system in which individuals are increasingly reluctant to participate or…

Since 2008, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has been conducting a biennial survey of higher education sustainability positions. These surveys collect data from sustainability officers as well as a number of more focused sustainability positions such as recycling/waste staff and sustainable energy…

This study illustrates how respondents' stated choices (the discrete choice experiment method) combined with the random utility framework can be used to model preferences for higher education. The flexibility offered by stated preference data circumvents limitations of other approaches, and allows quantifying young people' preferences for selected…