Currently in my fifth year in the PhD program, I learned just how strenuous research can be. When I first began my research project, I struggled with figuring out novel and tractable research ideas. I toyed with ideas in development economics and migration, and then landed on higher education. Considering my 8+ years of post-secondary learning, this topic was one I felt passionate about. For my second-year paper, I studied the relationship between local labor market conditions and community college completion rates, which were astronomically low. I drew on data from multiple sources as well as using a two-way-fixed-effects model to find my conclusion: Two-year college completion rates are higher in metropolitan areas where Associate's degree holders earn more relative to those who only hold a high-school diploma. My results suggest that at least some community college dropouts may reflect students learning about the relative benefits of a degree in their locale.
I also partnered with Randall Walsh and Patricia Beeson on a paper called “Within High School Spillovers in College Choice”. We studied how the admissions outcomes of one high school class affect the application decisions of their younger peers. Using data from a single large university we found that admitting a marginal applicant modestly increases the number of applications from that student’s high school the following year. The percentages are largest when looking at geographically distant high schools. Our work speaks to the potential for affirmative action to alter the future composition of the applicant pool.
I would also like to highlight my work-in-progress with fellow PhD student David Agorastos. David and I are investigating how student loan debt affects post-graduation location decisions. Using Experian credit data, we find that individuals with more debt at age 22 are more likely to move between the ages of 22-25. Conditional on moving, individuals with more student debt tend to move to higher income metropolitan areas. Our study illuminates one factor, student debt, which may contribute to the increased concentration of college-education workers in the largest metropolitan areas.
Spring 2022