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Working Paper
Causes and Consequences of Student-College Mismatch
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 Paper
Every Little Bit Counts: The Impact of High-speed Internet on the Transition to College
This paper investigates the effects of high-speed Internet on students' college application decisions. We link the diffusion of zip code-level residential broadband Internet to millions of PSAT and SAT takers' college testing and application outcomes and find that students with access to high-speed Internet in their junior year of high school perform better on the SAT and apply to a higher number and more expansive set of colleges. Effects appear to be concentrated among higher-SES students, indicating that while, on average, high-speed Internet improved students' postsecondary outcomes, it ...