The question of why postsecondary institutions produce different labor market outcomes is difficult to answer due to unobserved student characteristics. Here, I leverage students' geographic proximity to three classifications of postsecondary institutions -- earnings-enhancing, competitive, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).…

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this paper examines whether community college "vertical transfer" students who resemble "native four-year" students in their accumulated college-level credits and performance at their point of entry into the four-year sector perform equally well in terms of both academic and…