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Report
Human capital investments and expectations about career and family
Zafar, Basit; Wiswall, Matthew (2016-08-01)
This paper studies how individuals believe human capital investments will affect their future career and family life. We conducted a survey of high-ability currently enrolled college students and elicited beliefs about how their choice of college major, and whether to complete their degree at all, would affect a wide array of future events, including future earnings, employment, marriage prospects, potential spousal characteristics, and fertility. We find that students perceive large ?returns" to human capital not only in their own future earnings, but also in a number of other dimensions ...
Staff Reports , Paper 792

Working Paper
Predicting College Closures and Financial Distress
Kelchen, Robert; Ritter, Dubravka; Webber, Douglas A. (2025-01-06)
In this paper, we assemble the most comprehensive dataset to date on the characteristics of colleges and universities, including dates of operation, institutional setting, student body, staff, and finance data from 2002 to 2023. We provide an extensive description of what is known and unknown about closed colleges compared with institutions that did not close. Using this data, we first develop a series of predictive models of financial distress, utilizing factors like operational revenue/expense patterns, sources of revenue, metrics of liquidity and leverage, enrollment/staff patterns, and ...
Finance and Economics Discussion Series , Paper 2025-003

Report
Tuition, Debt, and Human Capital
Chakrabarti, Rajashri; Liberman, Andres; Yannelis, Constantine; Fos, Vyacheslav (2020-02-01)
This paper investigates the eﬀects of college tuition on student debt and human capital accumulation. We exploit data from a random sample of undergraduate students in the United States and implement a research design that instruments for tuition with relatively large changes to the tuition of students who enrolled at the same school in diﬀerent cohorts. We ﬁnd that $10,000 in higher tuition causally reduces the probability of graduating with a graduate degree by 6.2 percentage points and increases student debt by $2,961. Higher tuition also reduces the probability of obtaining an ...
Staff Reports , Paper 912

Working Paper
Causes and Consequences of Student-College Mismatch
Leukhina, Oksana; Koreshkova, Tatyana; Hendricks, Lutz (2024-09)
Our objective is to understand the observed patterns of student-college sorting and earnings premia associated with college quality in the United States. Higher quality colleges have higher graduation rates and their graduates earn more. Yet, a large fraction of high scoring students enroll in two-year schools and low quality four-year schools – this “undermatch” phenomenon is more pronounced for low income students. To understand these patterns, we develop a model with heterogeneous students and colleges that differ in human capital production technology and financial costs. We ...
Working Papers , Paper 2022-026

Working Paper
The Expanding Landscape of Online Education: Who Engages and How They Fare
Barrow, Lisa; Morris, Wesley; Sartain, Lauren (2022-11)
Online offerings at traditional brick-and-mortar universities have become common, though some question if online courses can adequately substitute for thein-person college experience. We explore changes in undergraduate online course enrollment at a large, public 4-year system and the impacts of online courses onstudent outcomes. Online enrollment in courses nearly doubled from 2012 to 2019 when almost 40 percent took at least one class online. Female students and older students were especially likely to take online classes. Using an instrumental variables approach, we find that GPAs are ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP 2022-52

Working Paper
Making the (Letter) Grade: The Incentive Effects of Mandatory Pass/Fail Courses
Butcher, Kristin F.; McEwan, Patrick; Weerapana, Akila (2022-11)
In Fall 2014, Wellesley College began mandating pass/fail grading for courses taken by first-year, first-semester students, although instructors continued to record letter grades. We identify the causal effect of the policy on course choice and performance, using a regression-discontinuity-in-time design. Students shifted to lower-grading STEM courses in the first semester, but did not increase their engagement with STEM in later semesters. Letter grades of first-semester students declined by 0.13 grade points, or 23% of a standard deviation. We evaluate causal channels of the grade ...
Working Paper Series , Paper WP 2022-55

Journal Article
The Rise and Fall of College Tuition Inflation
Bundick, Brent; Pollard, Emily (2019-01)
The cost of college tuition increased rapidly from 1980 to 2004 at a rate of about 7 percent per year, significantly outpacing the overall inflation rate. Since 2005, college tuition inflation has slowed markedly and has averaged closer to 2 percent per year for the last few years. Understanding what drives tuition inflation is important for predicting future tuition as well as personal income mobility. However, untangling the various supply and demand factors influencing college tuition can be challenging. {{p}} Brent Bundick and Emily Pollard document changes in college tuition inflation ...
Economic Review , Issue Q I , Pages 57-75

Working Paper
Parenthood and productivity of highly skilled labor: evidence from the groves of academe
Zimmermann, Christian; Ursprung, Heinrich W.; Krapf, Matthias (2014-01-11)
We examine the effect of pregnancy and parenthood on the research productivity of academic economists. Combining the survey responses of nearly 10,000 economists with their publication records as documented in their RePEc accounts, we do not find that motherhood is associated with low research productivity. Nor do we find a statistically significant unconditional effect of a first child on research productivity. Conditional difference-in-differences estimates, however, suggest that the effect of parenthood on research productivity is negative for unmarried women and positive for untenured ...
Working Papers , Paper 2014-1

Working Paper
Expanding Access to Selective Colleges
Hendricks, Lutz; Koreshkova, Tatyana; Leukhina, Oksana (2026-05-24)
This paper studies the effects of expanding high-quality public university capacities on student earnings and welfare. Using a quantitative model of college choice, we find that expanding the most selective colleges by 20 percent increases skilled labor supply by 5.3 percent, aggregate earnings by 0.8 percent, and welfare by 2.2 percent. The gains arise because a large number of high ability students are rationed out of selective colleges. When admitted, these students graduate at high rates and enjoy substantial earnings gains. The earnings gains generated by expanding college capacity are ...
Working Papers , Paper 2026-005

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