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Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 30.
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Working Paper
Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation
Prior research suggests that statewide affirmative action bans reduce minority enrollment at selective colleges while leaving overall minority college enrollment unchanged. However, the effect of these bans on across-college racial segregation has not yet been estimated. This effect is theoretically ambiguous due to a U-shaped relationship across colleges between minority enrollment and college selectivity. This paper uses variation in the timing of affirmative action bans across states to estimate their effects on racial segregation as measured by standard exposure and dissimilarity indexes, ...
Speech
The Cost of College
Speaking at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO. President Harker speaks about the Cost of College.
Journal Article
Capital for Communities: Financing Human Capital Through Income Share Agreements
Outstanding federal student loan balances in the U.S. exceed $1.2 trillion, and many believe rising student loan delinquencies represent an emerging crisis for students and the broader economy. Income share agreements (ISAs) have been identified as a new potential source for financing higher education, making important investments in human capital improvements while limiting some of the debt burden placed on students. This article will explore why some believe that alternatives to traditional student loans are needed and will also examine the promising solutions ISAs could bring to students ...
Speech
Creating a Vibrant, Inclusive Economy: Remarks at the Community College of Rhode Island
First, I want to highlight why I wanted to prioritize speaking at a community college like CCRI; and why community colleges, and all of you engaged with them, are so important to our economy and society. Then, I’ll talk briefly about the range of things we do at the Federal Reserve, to advance our mission. And finally, I’ll share some of the lessons I’ve learned from my own career path, in case my experiences may be helpful to you.
Journal Article
The Return on Investing in a College Education
Comparing higher education’s costs and benefits—tuition and greater future earnings, respectively—shows that the returns on investing in college can be high.
Journal Article
Do Affirmative Action Bans Cause Students to Move Across State Lines to Attend College?
This Economic Commentary studies whether statewide bans on affirmative action in admission to public universities cause students to move to a new state to attend college. Regression results using data from the decennial census and the American Community Survey provide little evidence that affirmative action bans result in migration across state lines to attend college. In addition to being of direct interest, these results provide a check on earlier research that treats different states roughly as separate higher education markets.
Working Paper
An Empirical Analysis of Racial Segregation in Higher Education
This descriptive paper documents how segregation between blacks and whites across colleges in the United States has evolved since the 1960s. It also explores potential channels through which changes are occurring, and it uses recent data to study the issue of segregation within colleges. The main findings are as follows: (1) White exposure to blacks has been rising since the 1960s, whereas black exposure to whites increased sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has fluctuated since then. Meanwhile, black-white dissimilarity and the Theil index fell sharply in the late 1960s and early ...
Working Paper
Navigating Higher Education Insurance: An Experimental Study on Demand and Adverse Selection"
We conduct a survey-based experiment with 2,776 students at a non-profit university to analyze income insurance demand in education financing. We offered students a hypothetical choice: either a federal loan with income-driven repayment or an income-share agreement (ISA), with randomized framing of downside protections. Emphasizing income insurance increased ISA uptake by 43%. We observe that students are responsive to changes in contract terms and possible student loan cancellation, which is evidence of preference adjustment or adverse selection. Our results indicate that framing specific ...
Discussion Paper
The Changing Role of Community-College and For-Profit-College Borrowers in the Student Loan Market
In the first post in this series, we characterized the rapid transformation of the higher education market over the 2000-2015 period, a transformation that was led by explosive growth of the for-profit sector of higher education. In the second post, we found that most of this growth was driven by nontraditional students entering these institutions. Given this growth and the marked change in student composition, it is important to understand what impact these patterns might have on student loan originations, student loan volume, and the borrower pool in the various sectors of higher education. ...
Working Paper
Making the (Letter) Grade: The Incentive Effects of Mandatory Pass/Fail Courses
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 ...