College Tuition and Income Inequality

This paper evaluates the role of rising income inequality in explaining observed growth in college tuition. We develop a competitive model of the college market, in which college quality depends on instructional expenditure and the average ability of admitted students. An innovative feature of our model is that it allows for a continuous distribution of college quality. We find that observed increases in US income inequality can explain more than half of the observed rise in average net tuition since 1990 and that rising income inequality has also depressed college attendance. (JEL D31, I22, I23, I24)

College Attendance among Low-Income Youth: Explaining Differences across Wisconsin High Schools

Bolstering low-income students’ postsecondary participation is important to remediate these students’ disadvantages and to improve society’s overall level of education. Recent research has demonstrated that secondary schools vary considerably in their tendencies to send students to postsecondary education, but existing research has not systematically identified the school characteristics that explain this variation. Identifying these characteristics can help improve low-income students’ postsecondary outcomes. We identify relevant characteristics using population-level data from Wisconsin, a mid-size state in the United States. We first show that Wisconsin’s income-based disparities in postsecondary participation are wide, even net of academic achievement. Next, we show that several geographic characteristics of schools help explain between-secondary school variation in low-income students’ postsecondary outcomes. Finally, we test whether a dense set of school organisational features explain any remaining variation. We find that these features explain virtually no variation in secondary schools’ tendencies to send low-income students to postsecondary education.

Attendance Management System Using Face Recognition Method

When it comes to classroom management, the attendance check is a critical component. Time-consuming, particularly when it comes to open meetings, is checking attendance by calling names or by handing around a sign-in sheet to make it easier to commit fraud. An implementation of a real-time attendance check is described in this article in great detail facial recognition system and its outcomes. The system must be able to identify a student’s face in order for it to work first snap a photograph of the pupil and save it in a database as a reference for future use. During the event, there were students may be identified by using the webcam, which captures photos of their faces auto-detects faces and selects students with names that are most likely to match, and lastly, depending on the facial recognition findings, an excel file will be updated to reflect attendance. To identify faces in webcam footage, the system uses a pre-trained Haar Cascade model. As a result, a 128-bit FaceNet has been generated by training it to minimise the triplet loss. The dimensions of the facial picture. When two facial pictures have similar encodings If the two facial pictures are from the same student or different. Use of the system as part of a class, and the outcomes have been extremely positive. There has been a poll done to find out more about There are both advantages and disadvantages to using a college attendance system.

The Causal Interpretation of Two-Stage Least Squares with Multiple Instrumental Variables

Empirical researchers often combine multiple instrumental variables (IVs) for a single treatment using two-stage least squares (2SLS). When treatment effects are heterogeneous, a common justification for including multiple IVs is that the 2SLS estimand can be given a causal interpretation as a positively weighted average of local average treatment effects (LATEs). This justification requires the well-known monotonicity condition. However, we show that with more than one instrument, this condition can only be satisfied if choice behavior is effectively homogeneous. Based on this finding, we consider the use of multiple IVs under a weaker, partial monotonicity condition. We characterize empirically verifiable sufficient and necessary conditions for the 2SLS estimand to be a positively weighted average of LATEs under partial monotonicity. We apply these results to an empirical analysis of the returns to college with multiple instruments. We show that the standard monotonicity condition is at odds with the data. Nevertheless, our empirical checks reveal that the 2SLS estimate retains a causal interpretation as a positively weighted average of the effects of college attendance among complier groups. (JEL C26, I23, I26, J24, J31, R23)

G.I. Jane Goes to College? Female Educational Attainment, Earnings, and the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944

The 1944 Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (the “G.I. Bill”) provided returning WWII veterans with educational benefits sufficient to cover tuition, fees, and living expenses at almost any U.S. university or college. While several studies examine subsequent educational attainment and earnings for male veterans, little is known about how the G.I. Bill affected the 330,000 American females who served in WWII. Using data from the 1980 5 percent Census Public-use Microdata Sample, I find that female WWII veteran status is associated with a 19 percentage point increase in the proportion who report any college attendance, a 7.8 percentage point increase in college completion, and earnings that are 19.8 percent greater relative to comparable females who are not veterans. Because service was entirely voluntary for females, I use service eligibility requirements, enlistment records, 1940 Census data, and the G.I. Bill’s retroactive nature to establish a causal relationship among veteran status, educational attainment via the G.I. Bill, and increased earnings. To help separate the effect of the G.I. Bill from the effect of military service itself, and because benefits increased with longer service, I instrument for female veterans’ educational attainment using age at the time of the G.I. Bill’s announcement. My instrumental variables estimates imply that female veterans’ earnings increase by $1,350 (11.6 percent) per year of G.I. Bill-induced education, explaining 73 percent of the overall difference between veteran and non-veteran females’ earnings in 1980.

An exploratory study of freshman attrition from an Appalachian physiology program

Appalachia has low rates of college attendance and graduation, but relevant data investigating student attrition from physiology majors in this region are lacking. This exploratory study examined freshman attrition from an undergraduate exercise physiology program in Appalachia with the goal of identifying potential strategies for improving retention across similar programs in this underserved region. Questionnaires were administered at the beginning and end of the fall semester to freshman ( n = 247) and students transferring out of the major [Transferred group (T); n = 50] by the end of their first semester were compared against those that remained [Retained group (R); n = 190]. The Transferred group was invited to participate in qualitative interviews. Fewer Transferred students reported feeling underprepared in academic preparedness skills, but more reported feeling underprepared in math. At the end of the semester, more in the Transferred group reported doing worse than expected in math and in getting good grades and had a lower grade point average (R: 3.27 ± 0.05; T: 2.62 ± 0.15; P < 0.01). More in the Transferred group were first-generation (FG) college students (R: 17%; T: 30%). Transferred FG had lower academic preparation and performance and more financial need than Retained FG. In interviews ( n = 35), most students expressed a change in career goals and many noted the academic rigor of the program, while academic advising, faculty, and the major received generally positive praise. This study identified several factors that would allow for early identification of incoming freshmen at risk for attrition and proposes strategies for improving retention within Appalachian physiology programs.

Attendance, Completion, and Heterogeneous Returns to College

A growing body of social science research has investigated whether the economic payoff to a college education is heterogeneous — in particular, whether socioeconomically disadvantaged youth can benefit more from attending and completing college relative to their more advantaged peers. Scholars, however, have employed different analytical strategies and reported mixed findings. To shed light on this literature, I propose a sequential approach to conceptualizing, evaluating, and unpacking the causal effects of college on earnings. By decomposing the total effect of attending a four-year college into several direct and indirect components, this approach not only clarifies the mechanisms through which college attendance boosts earnings, but illuminates the ways in which the postsecondary system may be both an equalizer and a disequalizer. The total effect of college attendance, its direct and indirect components, and their heterogeneity by socioeconomic background are all identified under the assumption of sequential ignorability. I introduce a debiased machine learning (DML) method for estimating all quantities of interest, along with a set of bias formulas for sensitivity analysis. I illustrate the proposed framework and methodology using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort.

Net Tuition, Unmet Financial Need, and Cooling Out: A National Study of Degree Aspirations Among First-Time Community College Students

Objective: This study examined the statistical association between net tuition and changes in degree aspirations among community college students. In addition, the study explored the moderating influence of unmet financial need. Method: Analyses relied on data from the most recent iteration of the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study. Estimates were derived from a series of robust multinomial models controlling for student, institutional, and state-level covariates. Results: Net tuition was consistently associated with decreased risks of experiencing a “cool out,” regardless of model specification. Yet, this main effect of net tuition was moderated by unmet need, such that net tuition increased cool out risks among students with greater unmet need. Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that net reductions in tuition alone may not fully reduce or eliminate barriers to college access and student success. Future financial aid policies should focus on the full cost of college attendance.